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OUR  VANISHING 
WILD  LIFE 

ITS 

EXTERMINATION    AND    PRESERVATION 


BY 
WILLIAM    t/'HORNADAY,    Sc.D 

DIRECTOR  OF  THE  NEW  YORK  ZOOLOGICAL  PARK; 
AUTHOR  OF  "THE  AMERICAN  NATURAL  HISTORY"; 
EX-PRESIDENT    OF   THE    AMERICAN   BISON    SOCIETY 


WITH    MAPS    AND    ILLUSTRATIONS 


"Hew  to  the  line!     Let  the  chips  fall  where  they  will." — Old  Exhortation. 
"Nothing  extenuate,  nor  set  down  aught  in  malice." — Othello. 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

19  13 


■>^' 


-i^^ 


Copyright,  1913,  by 

WILLIAM  T.  HORNADAY 

First  Publication,  Jan,  1913. 


SPECIAL    NOTICE 

For  the  benefit  of  the  cause  that  this  book 
represents,  the  author  freely  extends  to  all  peri- 
odicals and  lecturers  the  privilege  of  reproducing 
any  of  the  maps  and  illustrations  in  this  volume 
except  the  bird  portraits,  the  white-tailed  deer 
and  antelope,  and  the  maps  and  pictures  specially 
copyrighted  by  other  persons,  and  so  recorded. 
This  privilege  does  not  cover  reproductions  in 
books,  without  special  permission. 


(aiark&  3ffrma 

PRINTERS 

209    WEST    38TH     STREET 

NEW    YORK 


©CI.A332289 


1 

I 


FOUNDER    AND    PRESIDENT    OF    THE 

NATIONAL    ASSOCIATION    OF    AUDUBON    SOCIETIES,    AND 

LIFE-LONG  CHAMPION    OF    AMERICAN    BIRDS 

THIS    VOLUME    IS    DEDICATED    BY 

A    SINCERE    ADMIRER 


"/  drink  to  him,  he  is  not  here, 
Yet  I  would  guard  his  glory; 
A  knight  without  reproach  or  fear 
Should  live  in  song  and  story." 

—Walsh. 


FOREWORD 


The  preservation  of  animal  and  plant  life,  and  of  the  general  beauty 
of  Nature,  is  one  of  the  foremost  duties  of  the  men  and  women  of  to-day. 
It  is  an  imperative  duty,  because  it  must  be  performed  at  once,  for  other- 
wise it  will  be  too  late.  Every  possible  means  of  preservation, — senti- 
mental, educational  and  legislative, — must  be  employed. 

The  present  warning  issues  with  no  uncertain  sound,  because  this 
great  battle  for  preservation  and  conservation  cannot  be  won  by  gentle 
tones,  nor  by  appeals  to  the  aesthetic  instincts  of  those  who  have  no  sense 
of  beauty,  or  enjoyment  of  Nature.  It  is  necessary  to  sound  a  loud  alarm, 
to  present  the  facts  in  very  strong  language,  backed  up  by  irrefutable 
statistics  and  by  photographs  which  tell  no  lies,  to  estabhsh  the  law  and 
enforce  it  if  needs  be  with  a  bludgeon. 

This  book  is  such  an  alarm  call.  Its  forceful  pages  remind  me  of  the 
sounding  of  the  great  bells  in  the  watch-towers  of  the  cities  of  the  Middle 
Ages  which  called  the  citizens  to  arms  to  protect  their  homes,  their  liber- 
ties and  their  happiness.  It  is  undeniable  that  the  welfare  and  happiness 
of  our  own  and  of  all  future  generations  of  Americans  are  at  stake  in 
this  battle  for  the  preservation  of  Nature  against  the  selfishness,  the 
ignorance,  or  the  cruelty  of  her  destroyers. 

We  no  longer  destroy  great  works  of  art.  They  are  treasured,  and 
regarded  as  of  priceless  value;  but  we  have  yet  to  attain  the  state  of 
civilization  where  the  destruction  of  a  glorious  work  of  Nature,  whether 
it  be  a  cliff,  a  forest,  or  a  species  of  mammal  or  bird,  is  regarded  with 
equal  abhorrence.  The  whole  earth  is  a  poorer  place  to  live  in  when  a 
colony  of  exquisite  egrets  or  birds  of  paradise  is  destroyed  in  order  that 
the  plumes  may  decorate  the  hat  of  some  lady  of  fashion,  and  ultimately 
find  their  way  into  the  rubbish  heap.  The  people  of  all  the  New  England 
States  are  poorer  when  the  ignorant  whites,  foreigners,  or  negroes  of  our 
southern  states  destroy  the  robins  and  other  song  birds  of  the  North 
for  a  mess  of  pottage. 

Travels  through  Europe,  as  well  as  over  a  large  part  of  the  North 
American  continent,  have  convinced  me  that  nowhere  is  Nature  being 
destroyed  so  rapidly  as  in  the  United  States.  Except  within  our  con- 
servation areas,  an  earthly  paradise  is  being  turned  into  an  earthly 
hades;  and  it  is  not  savages  nor  primitive  men  who  are  doing  this,  but 
men  and  women  who  boast  of  their  civilization.  Air  and  water  are 
polluted,  rivers  and  streams  serve  as  sewers  and  dumping  grounds,  forests 
are  swept  away  and  fishes  are  driven  from  the  streams.  Many  birds  are 
becoming  extinct,  and  certain  mammals  are  on  the  verge  of  extermina- 


viii  FOREWORD 

tion.  Vulgar  advertisements  hide  the  landscape,  and  in  all  that  disfigures 
the  wonderftd  heritage  of  the  beauty  of  Nature  to-day,  we  Americans 
are  in  the  lead. 

Fortunately  the  tide  of  destruction  is  ebbing,  and  the  tide  of  con- 
servation is  coming  in.  Americans  are  practical.  Like  all  other  northern 
peoples,  they  love  money  and  will  sacrifice  much  for  it,  but  they  are 
'  also  full  of  idealism,  as  well  as  of  moral  and  spiritual  energy.  The  in- 
fluence of  the  splendid  body  of  Americans  and  Canadians  who  have 
turned  their  best  forces  of  mind  and  language  into  literature  and  into 
political  power  for  the  conservation  movement,  is  becoming  stronger 
every  day.  Yet  we  are  far  from  the  point  where  the  momentum  of 
conservation  is  strong  enough  to  arrest  and  roll  back  the  tide  of  destruc- 
tion; and  this  is  especially  true  with  regard  to  our  fast  vanishing  animal 
life. 

The  facts  and  figures  set  forth  in  this  volume  will  astonish  all  those 
lovers  of  Nature  and  friends  of  the  animal  world  who  are  living  in  a 
false  or  imaginary  sense  of  security.  The  logic  of  these  facts  is  inexorable. 
As  regards  our  birds  and  mammals,  the  failures  of  supposed  protection 
in  America — under  a  system  of  free  shooting — are  so  glaring  that  we  are 
confident  this  exposure  will  lead  to  sweeping  reforms.  The  author  of 
this  work  is  no  amateur  in  the  field  of  •  wild-life  protection.  His  ideas 
concerning  methods  of  reform  are  drawn  from  long  and  successful  ex- 
perience. The  states  which  are  still  behind  in  this  movement  may  well 
give  serious  heed  to  his  summons,  and  pass  the  new  laws  that  are  so 
urgently  demanded  to  save  the  vanishing  remnant. 

The  New  York  Zoological  Society,  which  is  cooperating  with  many 
other  organizations  in  this  great  movement,  sends  forth  this  work  in 
the  belief  that  there  is  no  one  who  is  more  ardently  devoted  to  the  great 
cause  or  rendering  more  effective  service  in  it  than  William  T.  Hornaday. 
We  believe  that  this  is  a  great  book,  destined  to  exert  a  world-wide 
influence,  to  be  translated  into  other  languages,  and  to  arouse  the  de- 
fenders and  lovers  of  our  vanishing  animal  life  before  it  is  too  late. 

Henry  Fairfield  Osborn, 
10  December,  1912.  President  of  the  New  York  Zoological  Society 


PREFACE 

The  writing  of  this  book  has  taught  me  many  things.  Beyond  ques- 
tion, we  are  exterminating  our  finest  species  of  mammals,  birds  and 
fishes  according  to  law ! 

I  am  appalled  by  the  mass  of  evidence  proving  that  throughout  the 
entire  United  States  and  Canada,  in  every  state  and  province,  the  ex- 
isting legal  system  for  the  preservation  of  wild  life  is  fatally  defective. 
There  is  not  a  single  state  in  our  country  from  which  the  killable  game 
is  not  being  rapidly  and  persistently  shot  to  death,  legally  or  illegally, 
very  much  more  rapidly  than  it  is  breeding,  with  extermination  for  the 
most  of  it  close  in  sight.  This  statement  is  not  open  to  argument;  for 
millions  of  men  know  that  it  is  literally  true.  We  are  living  in  a  fool's 
paradise. 

The  rage  for  wild-life  slaughter  is  far  more  prevalent  to-day  through- 
out the  world  than  it  was  in  1872,  when  the  buffalo  butchers  paved  the 
prairies  of  Texas  and  Colorado  with  festering  carcasses.  From  one  end 
of  our  continent  to  the  other,  there  is  a  restless,  resistless  desire  to  "kill, 
kill!'' 

I  have  been  shocked  by  the  accumulation  of  evidence  showing  that 
all  over  our  country  and  Canada  fully  nine-tenths  of  our  protective  laws 
have  practically  been  dictated  by  the  killers  of  the  game,  and  that  in 
all  save  a  very  few  instances  the  hunters  have  been  exceedingly  careful 
to  provide  "open  seasons"  for  slaughter,  as  long  as  anv  game  remains 
to  kill! 

And  yet,  the  game  of  North  America  does  not  belong  wholly  and  ex- 
clusively to  the  men  who  kill !  The  other  ninety-seven  per  cent  of  the  People 
have  vested  rights  in  it,  far  exceeding  those  of  the  three  per  cent.  Posterity 
has  claims  upon  it  that  no  honest  man  can  ignore. 

I  am  now  going  to  ask  both  the  true  sportsman  and  the  people  who 
do  not  kill  wild  things  to  awake,  and  do  their  plain  duty  in  protecting 
and  preserving  the  game  and  other  wild  life  which  belongs  partly  to  us, 
but  chiefly  to  those  who  come  after  us.  Can  they  be  aroused,  before  it 
is  too  late? 

The  time  to  discuss  tiresome  academic  theories  regarding  "bag  limits " 
and  different  "open  seasons"  as  being  sufficient  to  preserve  the  game, 
has  gone  by!  We  have  reached  the  point  where  the  alternatives  are 
long  closed  seasons  or  a  gameless  continent;  and  we  must  choose  one  or 
the  other,  speedily.  A  continent  without  wild  life  is  like  a  forest  with 
no  leaves  on  the  trees. 


X  PREFACE 

The  great  increase  in  the  slaughter  of  song  birds  for  food,  by  the 
negroes  and  poor  whites  of  the  South,  has  become  an  unbearable  scourge 
to  our  migratory  birds, — the  very  birds  on  which  farmers  north  and 
south  depend  for  protection  from  the  insect  hordes, — the  very  birds 
that  are  most  near  and  dear  to  the  people  of  the  North.  Song-bird 
slaughter  is  growing  and  spreading,  with  the  decrease  of  the  game  birds ! 
It  is  a  matter  that  requires  instant  attention  and  stern  repression.  At 
the  present  moment  it  seems  that  the  only  remedy  lies  in  federal  pro- 
tection for  all  migratory  birds, — because  so  many  states  will  not  do 
their  duty. 

We  are  weary  of  witnessing  the  greed,  selfishness  and  cruelty  of 
"civilized"  man  toward  the  wild  creatures  of  the  earth.  We  are  sick 
of  tales  of  slaughter  and  pictures  of  carnage.  It  is  time  for  a  sweeping 
Reformation;  and  that  is  precisely  what  we  now  demand. 

I  have  been  a  sportsman  myself;  but  times  have  changed,  and  we 
rnust  change  also.  When  game  was  plentiful,  I  believed  that  it  was 
right  for  men  and  boys  to  kill  a  limited  amount  of  it  for  sport  and  for 
the  table.  But  the  old  basis  has  been  swept  away  by  an  Army  of  De- 
struction that  now  is  almost  beyond  all  control.  We  must  awake,  and 
arouse  to  the  new  situation,  face  it  like  men,  and  adjust  our  minds  to 
the  new  conditions.  The  three  million  gunners  of  to-day  must  no  longer 
expect  or  demand  the  same  generous  hunting  privileges  that  were  right 
for  hunters  fifty  years  ago,  when  game  was  fifty  times  as  plentiful  as  it 
is  now  and  there  was  only  one  killer  for  every  fifty  now  in  the  field. 

The  fatalistic  idea  that  bag-limit  laws  can  save  the  game  is  to-day 
the  curse  of  all  our  game  birds,  mammals  and  fishes!  It  is  a  fraud,  a 
delusion  and  a  snare.  That  miserable  fetich  has  been  worshipped  much 
too  long.  Our  game  is  being  exterminated,  everywhere,  by  blind  insist- 
ence upon  "open  seasons,"  and  solemn  reliance  upon  "legal  bag-limits." 
If  a  majority  of  the  people  of  America  feel  that  so  long  as  there  is  any 
game  alive  there  must  be  an  annual  two  months  or  four  months  open 
season  for  its  slaughter,  then  assuredly  we  soon  will  have  a  gameless 
continent. 

The  only  thing  that  will  save  the  game  is  by  stopping  the  killing  of  it ! 
In  establishing  and  promulgating  this  principle,  the  cause  of  wild-life 
protection  greatly  needs  three  things:  money,  labor,  and  publicity.  With 
the  first,  we  can  secure  the  second  and  third.  But  can  we  get  it, — 
and  get  it  in  time  to  save  f 

This  volume  is  in  every  sense  a  contribution  to  a  Cause ;  and  as  such 
it  ever  will  remain.  I  wish  the  public  to  receive  it  on  that  basis.  So  much 
important  material  has  drifted  straight  to  it  from  other  hands  that  this 
unexpected  aid  seems  to  the  author  like  a  good  omen. 

The  manuscript  has  received  the  benefit  of  a  close  and  critical  read- 
ing and  correcting  by  my  comrade  on  the  firing-line  and  esteemed  friend, 
Mr.  Madison  Grant,  through  which  the  text  was  greatly  improved.  But 
for  the  splendid  encouragement  and  assistance  that  I  have  received  from 


PREFACE  xi 

him  and  from  Professor  Henry  Fairfield  Osborn  the  work  involved  would 
have  borne  down  rather  heavily. 

The  four  chapters  embracing  the  "New  Laws  Needed;  A  Roll-Call  of 
the  States,"  were  critically  inspected,  corrected  and  brought  down  to 
date  by  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer,  our  highest  authority  on  the  game  laws  of  the 
Nation  and  the  States.  For  this  valuable  service  the  author  is  deeply 
grateful.  Of  course  the  author  is  alone  responsible  for  all  the  opinions 
and  conclusions  herein  recorded,  and  for  all  errors  that  appear  outside 
of  quotations. 

I  trust  that  the  Reader  will  kindly  excuse  and  forget  all  the  typo- 
graphic and  clerical  errors  that  may  have  escaped  me  in  the  rush  that 
had  to  be  made  against  Time. 

University  Heights,  New  York,  W.  T.  H. 

December  1,  1912.. 


1 


CONTENTS 

Part  I. — Extermination 

Chapter  Page 

I. — Former  Abundance  of  Wild  Life 1 

II. — Extinct  Species  of  North  American  Birds 7 

III. — The  Next  Candidates  for  Oblivion 17 

IV. — Extinct  and  Nearly  Extinct  Species  of  Mammals.  34 

V. — The  Extermination  of  Species,  State  by  State.  ...  42 

VI. — The  Regular  Army  of  Destruction 53 

VII. — The  Guerrillas  of  Destruction 63 

VIII. — The  Unseen  Foes  of  Wild  Life 73 

IX. — Destruction  of  Wild  Life  by  Diseases 82 

X. — Destruction  of  Wild  Life  by  the  Elements 88 

XI. — Slaughter  of  Song-Birds  by  Italians 94 

XIT. — Destruction  of  Song-Birds  by  Southern  Negroes 

AND  Poor  Whites 105 

XIII. — Extermination  of  Birds  for  Women's  Hats 114 

XIV. — The  Bird  Tragedy  on  Laysan  Island 137 

XV. — Unfair  Firearms  and  Shooting  Ethics 143 

XVI. — The  Present  and  Future  of  North  American  Big 

Game— 1 156 

XVII. — The  Present  and  Future  of  North  American  Big 

Game— II 171 

XVIII. — The  Present  and  Future  of  African  Game 181 

XIX. — The  Present  and  Future  of  Game  in  Asia 188 

XX. — Destruction  of  Birds  in  the   Far  East.     By  C. 

William  Beebe 195 

XXI. — The  vSavage  Viewpoint  of  the  Gunner 203 


Part  II. — Preservation 

XXII. — Our  Annual  Losses  by  Insects. 208 

XXIII. — The  Economic  Value  of  Birds 213 

XXIV. — Game  and  Agriculture:  Deer  as  a  Food  Supply.  .  .   234 


CONTENTS  xiii 

Chapter  Page 

XXV. — Law  and  Sentiment  as  Factors  in  Preservation  .  .   244 

XXVI. — The  Army  of  the  Defense 247 

XXVII. — How  to  Make  a  New  Game  Law 258 

XXVIII. — New  Laws  Needed:   A  Roll-Call  of  the  States — I  265 

XXIX. — New  Laws  Needed:  A  Roll-Call  of  the  States — II  275 

XXX. — New  Laws  Needed:  A  Roll-Call  of  the  States — III  283 

XXXI. — New  Laws  Needed:  A  Roll-Call  of  the  States — IV  292 

XXXII. — Need  for  a  Federal  Migratory  Bird  Law,   No- 

Sale-of-Game  Law,  and  Others 304 

XXXIII. — Bringing  Back  the  Vanished  Birds  and  Game 313 

XXXIV. — Introduced  Species  that  Have  Been  Beneficial..  .   324 

XXXV. — Introduced  Species  that  Have  Become  Pests 330 

XXXVI. — National   and   State    Game    Preserves   and   Bird 

Refuges 335 

XXXVII. — Game  Preserves  and  Game  Laws  in  Canada 350 

XXXVIII. — Private  Game  Preserves .358 

XXXIX. — British  Game  Preserves  in  Africa ^364 

XXL. — Breeding  Game  and  Fur  in  Captivity 369 

XLI. — Teaching  Wild-Life  Protection  to  the  Young.  .  .  .   376 

XLII. — Ethics  of  Sportsmanship 382 

XLIII. — The  Duty  of  American  Zoologists  to  American 

Wild  Life 386 

XLIV. — The  Greatest  Need  of  the  Cause;  and  the  Duty 

OF  THE  Hour 393 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Folly  of  1857  and  the  Lesson  of  1912 Frontispiece 

Shall  We  Leave  Any  One  of  Them  Open  ? 6 

Six  Recently  Exterminated  North  American  Birds 9 

Sacred  to  the  Memory  of  Exterminated  Birds 15 

Whooping  Cranes  in  the  Zoological  Park 19 

California  Condor 22 

Primated  Grouse,  or  "Prairie  Chicken " 25 

Sage  Grouse 26 

Snowy  Egrets  in  the  Mcllhenny  Preserve 27 

Wood- Duck 29 

Gray  Squirrel 32 

Skeleton  of  a  Rhytina 36 

Burghell's  Zebra 37 

Thylacine,  or  Tasmanian  Wolf 38 

West  Indian  Seal 39 

California  Elephant  Seal 40 

The  Regular  Army  of  Destruction 55 

G.  O.  Shields 58 

Two  Gunners  of  Kansas  City 61 

Why  the  Sandhill  Crane  is  Becoming  Extinct 62 

A  Market  Gunner  at  Work  on  Marsh  Island 64 

Ruffed  Grouse 65 

A  Lawful  Bag  of  Ruffed  Grouse 66 

Snow  Bunting 68 

A  Hunting  Cat  and  Its  Victim 76 

Eastern  Red  Squirrel 79 

Cooper's  Hawk 80 

Sharp-Shinned  Hawk 81 

The  Cat  that  Killed  Fifty-eight  Birds  in  One  Year '.  81 

An  Italian  Roccolo  on  Lake  Como 95 

Dead  Song-Birds 104 

The  Robin  of  the  North 107 

The  Mocking-Bird  of  the  South 107 

Northern  Robins  Ready  for  Southern  Slaughter 108 

Southern-Negro  Method  of  Combing  Out  the  Wild  Life HI 

Beautiful  and  Curious  Birds  Destroyed  for  the  Feather  Trade — I .  .  115 

Sixteen  Hundred  Hummingbirds  at  Two  Cents  Each 116 

Beautiful  and  Curious  Birds  Destroyed  for  the  Feather  Trade — II .  118 

Beautiful  and  Curious  Birds — III 123 

Fight  in  England  Against  the  Use  of  Plumage 128 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xv 

Young  Egrets,  Unable  to  Fly,  Starving 132 

Snow}'  Egret  Dead  on  Her  Nest 132 

Miscellaneous  Bird  Skins,  Eight  Cents  Each 135 

Laysan  Albatrosses,  Before  the  Great  Slaughter 138 

Laysan  Albatross  Rookery,  After  the  Great  Slaughter 139 

Acres  of  Gull  and  Albatross  Bones 140 

Shed  Filled  with  Wings  of  Slaughtered  Birds 141 

Four  of  the  Seven  Machine  Guns 144 

The  Champion  Game-Slaughter  Case 147 

Slaughtered  According  to  Law 149 

A  Letter  that  Tells  its  Own  Story 151 

The  " Sunday  Gun" 154 

The  Prong-Horned  Antelope 160 

Hungry  Elk  in  Jackson  Hole 168 

The  Wichita  National  Bison  Herd 179 

Pheasant  Snares 197 

Pheasant  Skins  Seized  at  Rangoon 198 

Deadfall  Traps  in  Burma 199 

One  Morning's  Catch  of  Trout  near  Spokane 205 

The  Cut-Worm 209 

The  Gypsy  Moth 211 

Downy  Woodpecker 214 

Baltimore  Oriole 217 

Nighthawk 218 

Purple  Martin 219 

Bob- White 221 

Rose-Breasted  Grosbeak 223 

Barn  Owl 225 

Golden- Winged  Woodpecker 227 

Kildeer  Plover 230 

Jacksnipe 230 

A  Food  Supply  of  White-Tailed  Deer 235 

White-Tailed  Deer 239 

Notable  Protectors  of  Wild  Life:  Madison  Grant,  Henry  Fairfield 

Osborn,  John  F.  Lacey,  and  WilHam  Dutcher 249 

Notable  Protectors;  Forbush,  Pearson,  Burnham,  Napier 251 

Notable  Protectors:  PhilHps,  Kalbfus,  Mcllhenny,  Ward 255 

Band-Tailed  Pigeon 273 

Six  Wild  Chipmunks  Dine  with  Mr.  Loring 315 

Chickadee,  Tamed 316 

Chipmunk,  Tamed 316 

Object  Lesson  in  Bringing  Back  the  Ducks 317 

Gulls  and  Terns  of  Our  Coast 321 

Egrets  and  Herons  in  Sanctuary  on  Marsh  Island 363 

Bird  Day  at  Carrick,  Pa 379 

Distributing  Bird  Boxes  and  Fruit  Trees 381 


MAPS 


The  Wilderness  of  North  America 155 

Former  and  Existing  Ranges  of  the  Elk 164 

Map  Showing  the  Disappearance  of  the  Lion .  183 

States  and  Provinces  Requiring  Resident  Licenses 303 

Eighteen  States  Prohibit  the  Sale  of  Game 307 

Map  Used  in  Campaign  for  Bayne  Law 309 

United  States  National  Game  Preserves 339 

Bird  Reservations  on  the  Gtdf  Coast  and  Florida 349 

Marsh  Island  and  Adjacent  Preserves 361 

Most  Important  Game  Preserves  of  Africa 366 


OUR  VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

PART    I.     EXTERMINATION 

CHAPTER  I 
THE   FORMER   ABUNDANCE   OF   WILD   LIFE 

"  By  my  labors  my  vineyard  flourished.    But  Ahab  came.    Alas!  for  Nahotli." 

In  order  that  the  American  people  may  correctly  understand  and 
judge  the  question  of  the  extinction  or  preservation  of  our  wild  life,  it 
is  necessary  to  recall  the  near  past.  It  is  not  necessary,  however,  to  go 
far  into  the  details  of  history;  for  a  few  quick  glances  at  a  few  high 
points  will  be  quite  sufficient  for  the  purpose  in  view. 

Any  man  who  reads  the  books  which  best  tell  the  story  of  the 
development  of  the  American  colonies  of  1712  into  the  American  nation 
of  1912,  and  takes  due  note  of  the  wild-life  features  of  the  tale,  will  say 
without  hesitation  that  when  the  American  people  received  this  land 
from  the  bountiful  hand  of  Nature,  it  was  endowed  with  a  magnificent 
and  all-pervading  supply  of  valuable  wild  creatures.  The  pioneers  and 
the  early  settlers  were  too  busy  even  to  take  due  note  of  that  fact,  or  to 
comment  upon  it,  save  in  very  fragmentary  ways. 

Nevertheless,  the  wild-life  abundance  of  early  American  days 
survived  down  to  so  late  a  period  that  it  touched  the  lives  of  millions  of 
people  now  living.  Any  man  55  years  of  age  who  when  a  boy  had  a  taste 
for  "hunting," — for  at  that  time  there  were  no  "sportsmen"  in  America, 
— will  remember  the  flocks  and  herds  of  wild  creatures  that  he  saw.  and 
which  made  upon  his  mind  many  indelible  impressions. 

"Abundance"  is  the  word  with  which  to  describe  the  original  animal 
life  that  stocked  our  country,  and  all  North  America,  only  a  short  half- 
century  ago.  Throughout  every  state,  on  every  shore-line,  in  all  the 
millions  of  fresh  water  lakes,  ponds  and  rivers,  on  every  mountain  range, 
in  every  forest,  and  even  on  every  desert,  the  wild  flocks  and  herds  held 
sway.  It  was  impossible  to  go  beyond  the  settled  haunts  of  civilized 
man  and  escape  them. 

It  was  a  full  century  after  the  complete  settlement  of  New  England 
and  the  Virginia  colonies  that  the  wonderful  big-game  fauna  of  the  great 
plains   and   Rocky    Mountains   was   really   discovered;     but   the   bison 


2  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

millions,  the  antelope  millions,  the  mule  deer,  the  mountain  sheep  and 
mountain  goat  were  there,  all  the  time.  In  the  early  days,  the  millions 
of  pinnated  grouse  and  quail  of  the  central  states  attracted  no  serious 
attention  from  the  American  people-at-large ;  but  they  lived  and  flour- 
ished just  the  same,  far  down  in  the  seventies,  when  the  greedy  market 
gunners  systematically  slaughtered  them,  and  barreled  them  up  for  "the 
market,"  while  the  foolish  farmers  calmly  permitted  them  to  do  it. 

We  obtain  the  best  of  our  history  of  the  former  abundance  of  North 
American  wild  life  first  from  the  pages  of  Audubon  and  Wilson;  next, 
from  the  records  left  by  such  pioneers  as  Lewis  and  Clark,  and  last  from 
the  testimony  of  living  men.  To  all  this  we  can,  many  of  us,  add  observa- 
tions of  our  own. 

To  me  the  most  striking  fact  that  stands  forth  in  the  story  of  American 
wild  life  one  hundred  years  ago  is  the  wide  extent  and  thoroughness  of 
its  distribution.  Wide  as  our  country  is,  and  marvelous  as  it  is  in  the 
diversity  of  its  climates,  its  soils,  its  topography,  its  flora,  its  riches 
and  its  poverty.  Nature  gave  to  each  square  mile  and  to  each  acre  a 
generous  quota  of  wild  creatures,  according  to  its  ability  to  maintain 
living  things.  No  pioneer  ever  pushed  so  far,  or  into  regions  so  difficult 
or  so  remote,  that  he  did  not  find  awaiting  him  a  host  of  birds  and  beasts. 
Sometimes  the  pioneer  was  not  a  good  hunter;  usually  he  was  a  stupid 
fisherman;  but  the  "game"  was  there,  nevertheless.  The  time  was 
when  every  farm  had  its  quota. 

The  part  that  the  wild  life  of  America  played  in  the  settlement  and 
development  of  this  continent  was  so  far-reaching  in  extent,  and  so 
enormous  in  potential  value,  that  it  fairly  staggers  the  imagination. 
From  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  down  to  the  present  hour  the  wild  game 
has  been  the  mainstay  and  the  resource  against  starvation  of  the  path- 
finder, the  settler,  the  prospector,  and  at  times  even  the  railroad-builder. 
In  view  of  what  the  bison  millions  did  for  the  Dakotas,  Montana,  Wyom- 
ing, Kansas  and  Texas,  it  is  only  right  and  square  that  those  states 
should  now  do  something  for  the  perpetual  preservation  of  the  bison 
species  and  all  other  big  game  that  needs  help. 

For  years  and  years,  the  antelope  millions  of  the  Montana  and  Wyo- 
ming grass-lands  fed  the  scout  and  Indian-fighter,  freighter,  cowboy  and 
surveyor,  ranchman  and  sheep-herder;  but  thus  far  I  have  yet  to  hear  of 
one  Western  state  that  has  ever  spent  one  penny  directly  for  the  pre- 
servation of  the  antelope !  And  to-day  we  are  in  a  hand-to-hand  fight 
in  Congress,  and  in  Montana,  with  the  Wool-Growers  Association,  which 
maintains  in  Washington  a  keen  lobbyist  to  keep  aloft  the  tariff  on  wool, 
and  prevent  Congress  from  taking  15  square  miles  of  grass  lands  on  Snow 
Creek,  Montana,  for  a  National  Antelope  Preserve.  All  that  the  wool- 
growers  want  is  the  entire  earth,  all  to  themselves.  Mr.  McClure,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Association  says: 

' '  The  proper  place  in  which  to  preserve  the  big  game  of  the  West  is 
in  city  parks,  where  it  can  be  protected." 


FORMER  ABUNDANCE  3 

To  the  colonist  of  the  East  and  pioneer  of  the  West,  the  white-tailed 
deer  was  an  ever  present  help  in  time  of  trouble.  Without  this  omni- 
present animal,  and  the  supply  of  good  meat  that  each  white  flag  repre- 
sented, the  commissariat  difficulties  of  the  settlers  who  won  the  country 
as  far  westward  as  Indiana  would  have  been  many  times  greater  than 
they  were.     The  backwoods  Pilgrim's  progress  was  like  this: 

Trail,  deer;  cabin,  deer;  clearing;  bear,  corn,  deer;  hogs,  deer; 
cattle,  wheat,  independence. 

And  yet,  how  many  men  are  there  to-day,  out  of  our  ninety  millions 
of  Ainericans  and  pseud o- Americans,  who  remember  with  any  feeling 
of  gratitude  the  part  played  in  American  history  by  the  white-tailed 
deer?  Very  few!  How  many  Americans  are  there  in  our  land  who  novv* 
preserve  that  deer  for  sentimental  reasons,  and  because  his  forbears  were 
nation-builders?    As  a  matter  of  fact,  are  there  any? 

On  ever}^  eastern  pioneer's  monument,  the  white-tailed  deer  should 
figure;  and  on  those  of  the  Great  West,  the  bison  and  the  antelope  should 
be  cast  in  enduring  bronze,  ''lest  we  forget!'' 

The  game  birds  of  America  played  a  different  part  from  that  of  the 
deer,  antelope  and  bison.  In  the  early  days,  shotguns  were  few,  and  shot 
was  scarce  and  dear.  The  wild  turkey  and  goose  were  the  smallest  birds 
on  which  a  rifleman  could  afford  to  expend  a  bullet  and  a  whole  charge  of 
powder.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  the  deer,  bear,  bison,  and  elk  dis- 
appeared from  the  eastern  United  States  while  the  game  birds  yet  re- 
mained abundant.  With  the  disappearance  of  the  big  game  came  the 
fat  steer,  hog  and  hominy,  the  wheat-field,  fruit  orchard  and  poultry 
galore. 

The  game  birds  of  America,  as  a  class  and  a  mass,  have  not  been 
swept  away  to  ward  off  starvation  or  to  rescue  the  perishing.  Even  back 
in  the  sixties  and  seventies,  very,  very  few  men  of  the  North  thought  of 
killing  prairie  chickens,  ducks  and  quail,  snipe  and  woodcock,  in  order  to 
keep  the  hunger  wolf  from  the  door.  The  process  was  too  slow  and  un- 
certain; and  besides,  the  really-poor  man  rarely  had  the  gun  and  am- 
munition. Instead  of  attempting  to  live  on  birds,  he  hustled  for  the 
staple  food  products  that  the  soil  of  his  own  farm  could  produce. 

First,  last  and  nearly  all  the  time,  the  game  birds  of  the  United  States 
as  a  whole,  have  been  sacrificed  on  the  altar  of  Rank  Luxury,  to  tempt 
appetities  that  were  tired  of  fried  chicken  and  other  farm  delicacies. 
To-day,  even  the  average  poor  man  hunts  birds  for  the  joy  of  the  outing, 
and  the  pampered  epicures  of  the  hotels  and  restaurants  buy  game  birds, 
and  eat  small  portions  of  them,  solely  to  tempt  jaded  appetites.  If 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  "class"  legislation,  it  is  that  which  permits  a 
few  sordid  market-shooters  to  slaughter  the  birds  of  the  whole  people  in 
order  to  sell  them  to  a  few  epicures. 

The  game  of  a  state  belongs  to  the  whole  people  of  the  state.  The 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  has  so  decided.  (Geer  vs.  Con- 
necticut). If  it  is  abundant,  it  is  a  valuable  asset.  The  great  value  of 
the  game  birds  of  America  lies  not  in  their  meat  pounds  as  they  lie  upon 


4  OUR  VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

the  table,  but  in  the  temptation  they  annually  put  before  milHons  of 
field- weary  farmers  and  desk- weary  clerks  and  merchants  to  get  into  their 
beloved  hunting  togs,  stalk  out  into  the  lap  of  Nature,  and  say  "Begone, 
dull  Care!" 

And  the  inan  who  has  had  a  fine  day  in  the  painted  woods,  on  the 
bright  waters  of  a  duck-haunted  bay,  or  in  the  golden  stubble  of  Sep- 
tember, can  fill  his  day  and  his  soul  with  six  good  birds  just  as  well  as 
with  sixty.  The  idea  that  in  order  to  enjoy  a  fine  day  in  the  open  a  man 
must  kill  a  wheel-barrow  load  of  birds,  is  a  mistaken  idea;  and  if  ob- 
stinately adhered  to,  it  becomes  vicious!  The  Outing  in  the  Open  is  the 
thing, — not  the  blood-stained  feathers,  nasty  viscera  and  Death  in  the 
game-bag.  One  quail  on  a  fence  is  worth  more  to  the  world  than  ten  in 
a  bag. 

The  farmers  of  America  have,  by  their  own  supineness  and  lack  of 
foresight,  permitted  the  slaughter  of  a  stock  of  game  birds  which,  had  it 
been  properly  and  wisely  conserved,  would  have  furnished  a  good  annual 
shoot  to  every  farming  man  and  boy  of  sporting  instincts  through  the 
past,  right  down  to  the  present,  and  far  beyond.  They  have  allowed 
millions  of  dollars  worth  of  their  birds  to  be  coolly  snatched  away  from 
them  by  the  greedy  market-shooters. 

There  is  one  state  in  America,  and  so  far  as  I  know  only  one,  in  which 
there  is  at  this  moment  an  old-time  abundance  of  game-bird  life.  That 
is  the  state  of  Louisiana.  The  reason  is  not  so  very  far  to  seek.  For  the 
birds  that  do  not  migrate, — quail,  wild  turkeys  and  doves, — the  cover 
is  yet  abundant.  For  the  migratory  game  birds  of  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
Louisiana  is  a  grand  central  depot,  with  terminal  facilities  that  are  un- 
surpassed. Her  reedy  shores,  her  vast  marshes,  her  long  coast  line  and 
abundance  of  food  furnish  what  should  be  not  only  a  haven  but  a  heaven 
for  ducks  and  geese.  After  running  the  gauntlet  of  guns  all  the  way  from 
Manitoba  and  Ontario  to  the  Sunk  Lands  of  Arkansas,  the  shores  of  the 
Gulf  must  seem  like  heaven  itself. 

The  great  forests  of  Louisiana  shelter  deer,  turkeys,  and  fur-bearing 
animals  galore;    and  rabbits  and  squirrels  abound. 

Naturally,  this  abundance  of  game  has  given  rise  to  an  extensive 
industry  in  shooting  for  the  market.  The  "big  interests"  outside  the 
state  send  their  agents  into  the  best  game  districts,  often  bringing  in 
their  own  force  of  shooters.  They  comb  out  the  game  in  enormous 
quantities,  without  leaving  to  the  people  of  Louisiana  any  decent  and 
fair  quid-pro-quo  for  having  despoiled  them  of  their  game  and  shipped  a 
vast  annual  product  outside,  to  create  wealth  elsewhere. 

At  present,  however,  we  are  but  incidentally  interested  in  the  short- 
sightedness of  the  people  of  the  Pelican  State.  As  a  state  of  oldtime 
abundance  in  killable  game,  the  killing  records  that  were  kept  in  the  year 
1909-10  possess  for  us  very  great  interest.  They  throw  a  startling  search- 
light on  the  subject  of  this  chapter, — the  former  abundance  of  wild  life. 
^  From  the  records  that  with  great  pains  and  labor  were  gathered  by 
the    State   Game   Commission,    and   which  were  furnished  me  for  use 


FORMER  A  B  UNDA  NCE  5 

here  by  President  Frank  M.  Miller,  we  set  forth  this  remarkable  exhibit 
of  old-fashion6d  abundance  in  j^ame,  a.d.  1909. 

Offical  Record  of  Game  Killed  in  Louisiana  During  the  Season 
(12  Months)  of  1909-10 

Birds 

Wild  Ducks,  sea  and  river 3,176,000 

Coots 280,740 

Geese  and  Brant 202,210 

Snipe,  Sandpiper  and  Plover 606, GSf) 

Quail  (Bob-White) 1,140,750 

Doves 310,660 

Wild  Turkeys 2,219 


y 


Total  numl:)er  of  game  birds  killed 5,719,214 

Mammals 

Deer 5,470 

Squirrels  and  Rabbits 690,270 

Total  of  game  mammals 695,740 

Fur-bearing  mammals 1,971,922 

Total  of  mammals 2,667,662 

Grand  total  of  birds  and  mammals 8,386,S76 

Of  the  thousands  of  slaughtered  robins,  it  would  seem  that  no  records 
exist.  It  is  to  be  understood  that  the  annual  slaughter  of  wild  life  in 
Louisiana  never  before  reached  such  a  pitch  as  now.  Without  drastic 
measures,  what  will  be  the  inevitable  result?  Does  any  man  suppose 
that  even  the  wild  millions  of  Louisiana  can  long  withstand  such  slaughter 
as  that  shown  by  the  official  figures  given  above  ?    It  is  wildly  impossible. 

But  the  darkest  hour  is  just  before  the  dawn.  At  the  session  of  the 
Louisiana  legislature  that  was  held  in  the  spring  of  1912,  great  improve- 
ments were  made  in  the  game  laws  of  that  state.  The  most  important 
feature  was  the  suppression  of  wholesale  market  hunting,  by  persons  vvho 
are  not  residents  of  the  state.  A  very  limited  amount  of  game  may  be 
sold  and  served  as  food  in  public  places,  but  the  restrictions  placed  upon 
this  traffic  are  so  effective  that  they  will  vastly  reduce  the  annual 
slaughter.  In  other  respects,  also,  the  cause  of  wild  life  protection  gained 
much;   for  which  great  credit  is  due  to  Mr.  Edward  A.  Mcllhenny. 

It  is  the  way  of  Americans  to  feel  that  because  game  is  abundant  in 
a  given  place  at  a  given  time,  it  always  will  be  abundant,  and  may  there- 
fore be  slaughtered  without  limit.  That  was  the  case  last  winter  in 
California  during  the  awful  slaughter  of  band-tailed  pigeons,  as  will  be 
noted  elsewhere. 

It  is  time  for  all  men  to  be  told  in  the  plainest  terms  that  there  never 
has  existed,  anywhere  in  historic  times,  a  volume  of  wild  life  so  great  that 
civilized  man  could  not  quickly  exterminate  it  by  his  methods  of  de- 


OUR  VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 


SHALL  WE  LEAVE  ANY  ONE  OP  THEM  OPEN? 


struction.  Lift  the  veil  and  look  at  the  stories  of  the  bison,  the  passenger 
pigeon,  the  wild  ducks  and  shore  birds  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  and  the 
fur-seal. 

As  reasoning  beings,  it  is  our  duty  to  heed  the  lessons  of  history,  and 
not  rush  blindly  on  until  we  perpetrate  a  continent  destitute  of  wild  life. 


CHAPTER  II 

EXTINCT   SPECIES   OF   NORTH   AMERICAN    BIRDS 

For  educated,  civilized  Man  to  exterminate  a  valuable  wild  species 
of  living  things  is  a  crime.  It  is  a  crime  against  his  own  children,  and 
posterity. 

No  man  has  a  right,  either  moral  or  legal,  to  destroy  or  squander  an 
inheritance  of  his  children  that  he  holds  for  them  in  trust.  And  man, 
the  wasteful  and  greedy  spendthrift  that  he  is,  has  not  created  even  the 
humblest  of  the  species  of  birds,  mammals  and  fishes  that  adorn  and 
enrich  this  earth.  "  The  earth  is  THE  LORD'S,  and  the  fulness  thereof !" 
With  all  his  wisdom,  man  has  not  evolved  and  placed  here  so  much  as  a 
ground-squirrel,  a  sparrow  or  a  clam.  It  is  true  that  he  has  juggled  with 
the  wild  horse  and  sheep,  the  goats  and  the  swine,  and  produced  some 
hardy  breeds  that  can  withstand  his  abuse  without  going  down  before  it ; 
but  as  for  species,  he  has  not  yet  created  and  placed  here  even  so  much 
as  a  protozoan. 

The  wild  things  of  this  earth  are  not  ours,  to  do  with  as  we  please. 
They  have  been  given  to  us  in  trust,  and  we  must  account  for  them  to 
the  generations  which  will  come  after  us  and  audit  our  accounts. 

But  man,  the  shameless  destroyer  of  Nature's  gifts,  blithely  and 
persistently  exterminates  one  species  after  another.  Fully  ten  per  cent 
of  the  human  race  consists  of  people  who  will  lie,  steal,  throw  rubbish 
in  parks,  and  destroy  forests  and  wild  life  whenever  and  wherever  they 
can  do  so  without  being  stopped  by  a  policemen  and  a  club.  These  are 
hard  words,  but  they  are  absolutely  true.  From  ten  per  cent  (or  more) 
of  the  human  race,  the  high  moral  instinct  which  is  honest  without  com- 
pulsion is  absent.  The  things  that  seemingly  decent  citizens, — men  pos- 
ing as  gentlemen, — will  do  to  wild  game  when  they  secure  great  chances 
to  slaughter,  are  appalling.  I  could  fill  a  book  of  this  size  with  cases 
in  point. 

To-day  the  women  of  England,  Europe  and  elsewhere  are  directly 
promoting  the  extermination  of  scores  of  beautiful  species  of  wild  birds 
by  the  devilish  persistence  with  which  they  buy  and  wear  feather  orna- 
-ments  made  of  their  plumage.  They  are  just  as  mean  and  cruel  as  the 
truck-driver  who  drives  a  horse  with  a  sore  shoulder  and  beats  him  on 
the  street.  But  they  do  it!  And  appeals  to  them  to  do  otherwise  they 
laugh  to  scorn,  saying,  "I  will  wear  what  is  fashionable,  when  I  please 
and  where  I  please!"  As  a  famous  bird  protector  of  England  has  just 
written  me,  "  The  women  of  the  smart  set  are  beyond  the  reach  of  appeal 
or  protest." 


8  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

To-day,  the  thing  that  stares  me  in  the  face  every  waking  hour,  like 
a  grisly  spectre  with  bloody  fang  and  claw,  is  the  extermination  of  species. 
To  me,  that  is  a  horrible  thing.  It  is  wholesale  murder,  no  less.  It  is 
capital  crime,  and  a  black  disgrace  to  the  races  of  civilized  mankind. 
I  say  "civilized  mankind,"  because  savages  don't  do  it! 

There  are  three  kinds  of  extermination: 

The  practical  extermination  of  a  species  means  the  destruction  of  its 
members  to  an  extent  so  thorough  and  widespread  that  the  species 
disappears  from  view,  and  living  specimens  of  it  can  not  be  found  by 
seeking  for  them.  In  North  America  this  is  to-day  the  status  of  the 
whooping  crane,  upland  plover,  and  several  other  species.  If  any  in- 
dividuals are  living,  they  will  be  met  with  only  by  accident. 

The  absolute  extermination  of  a  species  means  that  not  one  individual 
of  it  remains  alive.  Judgment  to  this  effect  is  based  upon  the  lapse  of 
time  since  the  last  living  specimen  was  observed  or  killed.  When  five 
years  have  passed  without  a  living  "record  "  of  a  wild  specimen,  it  is  time 
to  place  a  species  in  the  class  of  the  totally  extinct. 

Extermination  in  a  wild  state  means  that  the  only  living  representa- 
tives are  in  captivity  or  otherwise  under  protection.  This  is  the  case  of 
the  heath  hen  and  David's  deer,  of  China.  The  American  bison  is  saved 
from  being  wholly  extinct  as  a  wild  animal  by  the  remnant  of  about 
300  head  in  northern  Athabasca,  and  49  head  in  the  Yellow-stone  Park. 

It  is  a  serious  thing  to  exterminate  a  species  of  any  of  the  vertebrate 
animals.  There  are  probably  millions  of  people  who  do  not  realize  that 
civilized  ( ! )  man  is  the  most  persistently  and  wickedly  wasteful  of  all  the 
predatory  animals.  The  lions,  the  tigers,  the  bears,  the  eagles  and  hawks, 
serpents,  and  the  fish-eating  fishes,  all  live  by  destroying  life;  but  they 
kill  only  what  they  think  they  can  consume.  If  something  is  by  chance 
left  over,  it  goes  to  satisfy  the  hunger  of  the  humbler  creatures  of  prey. 
In  a  state  of  nature,  where  wild  creatures  prey  upon  wild  creatures,  such  a 
thing  as  wanton,  wholesale  and  utterly  wasteful  slaughter  is  almost  unknown! 

When  the  wild  mink,  weasel  and  skunk  suddenly  finds  himself  in  the 
midst  of  scores  of  man's  confined  and  helpless  domestic  fowls,  or  his 
caged  gulls  in  a  zoological  park,  an  unusual  criminal  passion  to  murder 
for  the  joy  of  killing  sometimes  seizes  the  wild  animal,  and  great  slaughter 
is  the  result. 

From  the  earliest  historic  times,  it  has  been  the  way  of  savage  man, 
red,  black,  brown  and  yellow,  to  kill  as  the  wild  animals  do, — only  what 
he  can  use,  or  thinks  he  can  use.  The  Cree  Indian  impounded  small  herds, 
of  bison,  and  sometimes  killed  from  100  to  200  at  one  time;  but  it  was 
to  make  sure  of  having  enough  meat  and  hides,  and  because  he  expected 
to  use  the  product.  I  think  that  even  the  worst  enemies  of  the  plains 
Indians  hardly  will  accuse  them  of  killing  large  numbers  of  bison,  elk  or 
deer  merely  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them  fall,  or  taking  only  their  teeth. 

It  has  remained  for  the  wolf,  the  sheep-killing  dog  and  civilized  man 
to  make  records  of  wanton  slaughter  which  puts  them  in  a  class  together, 


^if/''ir%;-\^^l^Mli— 


SIX  RECENTLY  EXTERMINATED  NORTH  AMERICAN  BIRDS 
Great  Auk  Labrador  Duck 

Eskimi)  Curlew  Pallas  Cormorant 

Passenger  Pigeon  Carolina  Parrakeet 


10  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

and  quite  apart  from  other  predatory  animals.  When  a  man  can  kill 
bison  for  their  tongues  alone,  bull  elk  for  their  "tusks"  alone,  and  shoot 
a  whole  colony  of  hippopotami, — actually  damming  a  river  with  their 
bloated  and  putrid  carcasses,  all  untouched  by  the  knife, — the  men  who 
do  such  things  must  be  classed  with  the  cruel  wolf  and  the  criminal  dog. 

It  is  now  desirable  that  we  should  pause  in  our  career  of  destruction 
long  enough  to  look  back  upon  what  we  have  recently  accomplished  in 
the  total  extinction  of  species,  and  also  note  what  we  have  blocked  out 
for  the  immediate  future.  Here  let  us  erect  a  monument  to  the  dead 
species  of  our  own  times. 

It  is  to  be  doubted  whether,  up  to  this  hour,  any  man  has  made  a  list 
of  the  species  of  North  American  birds  that  have  become  extinct  during 
the  past  sixty  years.  The  specialists  have  no  time  to  spare  from  their 
compound  differential  microscopes,  and  the  bird-killers  are  too  busy 
with  shooting,  netting  and  clubbing  to  waste  any  time  on  such  trifles  as 
exterminated  species.  What  does  a  market-shooter  care  about  birds 
that  can  not  be  killed  a  second  time  ?  As  for  the  farmers,  they  are  so  busy 
raising  hogs  and  prices  that  their  best  friends,  the  birds,  get  scant  atten- 
tion from  them, — until  a  hen-hawk  takes  a  chicken! 

Down  South,  the  negroes  and  poor  whites  may  slaughter  robins  for 
food  by  the  ten  thousand ;  but  does  the  northern  farmer  bother  his  head 
about  a  trifle  of  that  kind?  No,  indeed.  Will  he  contribute  any  real 
money  to  help  put  a  stop  to  it?    Ask  him  j^ourself. 

Let  us  pause  long  enough  to  reckon  up  some  of  our  expenditures  in 
species,  and  in  millions  of  individuals.  Let  us  set  down  here,  in  cold 
blood,  a  list  of  the  species  of  our  own  North  American  birds  that  have 
been  totally  exterminated  in  our  own  times.  After  that  we  will  have 
something  to  say  about  other  species  that  soon  will  be  exterminated ;  and 
the  second  task  is  much  greater  than  the  first. 

Roll  Call  of  the  Dead  Species  of  American  Birds 

The  Great  Auk, — Plautus  impennis,  (Linn.),  was  a  sea-going 
diving  bird  about  the  size  of  a  domestic  goose,  related  to  the  guillemots, 
murres  and  puffins.  For  a  bird  endowed  only  with  flipper-like  wings, 
and  therefore  absolutely  unable  to  fly,  this  species  had  an  astonishing 
geographic  range.  It  embraced  the  shores  of  northern  Europe  to 
North  Cape,  southern  Greenland,  southern  Labrador,  and  the  Atlantic 
coast  of  North  America  as  far  south  as  Massachusetts.  Some  say,  "as 
far  south  as  Massachusetts,  the  Carolinas  and  Florida,"  but  that  is  a 
large  order,  and  I  leave  the  A.O.U.  to  prove  that  if  it  can.  In  the  life 
history  of  this  bird,  a  great  tragedy  was  enacted  in  1800  by  sailors,  on 
Funk  Island,  north  of  Newfoundland,  where  men  were  landed  by  a  ship, 
and  spent  several  months  slaughtering  great  auks  and  trying  out  their 
fat  for  oil.  In  this  process,  the  bodies  of  thousands  of  auks  were  burned 
as  fuel,  in  working  up  the  remains  of  tens  of  thousands  of  others. 


EXTINCT  SPECIES  11 

On  Funk  Island,  a  favorite  breeding-place,  the  great  auk  was  ex- 
terminated in  1840,  and  in  Iceland  in  1844.  Many  natives  ate  this 
bird  with  relish,  and  being  easily  captured,  either  on  land  or  sea,  the 
commercialism  of  its  day  soon  obliterated  the  species.  The  last  living 
specimen  was  seen  in  1852,  and  the  last  dead  one  was  picked  up  in  Trinity 
Bay,  Ireland,  in  1853.  There  are  about  80  mounted  and  unmounted 
skins  in  existence,  four  skeletons,  and  quite  a  number  of  eggs.  An  egg 
is  worth  about  $1200  and  a  good  mounted  skin  at  least  double  that  sum. 

The  Labrador  Duck,  —  Camptorhynchus  lahradoricus ,  (Gmel.). — 
This  handsome  sea-duck,  of  a  species  related  to  the  eider  ducks  of  arctic 
waters,  became  totally  extinct  about  1875,  before  the  scientific  world 
even  knew  that  its  existence  was  threatened.  With  this  species,  the  exact 
and  final  cause  of  its  extinction  is  to  this  day  unknown.  It  is  not  at  all 
probable,  however,  that  its  unfortunate  blotting  out  from  our  bird  fauna 
was  due  to  natural  causes,  and  when  the  truth  becomes  known,  it  is  very 
probable  that  the  hand  of  man  will  be  revealed. 

The  Labrador  duck  bred  in  Labrador,  and  once  frequented  our 
Atlantic  coast  as  far  south  as  Chesapeake  Bay;  but  it  is  said  that  it  never 
was  very  numerous,  at  least  during  the  twenty-five  years  preceding  its 
disappearance.  About  thirty-five  skins  and  mounted  museum  specimens 
are  all  that  remain  to  prove  its  former  existence,  and  I  think  there  is  not 
even  one  skeleton. 

The  Pallas  Cormorant, —  Carbo  perspicillatus,  (Pallas).- — In  1741, 
when  the  Russian  explorer,  Commander  Bering,  discovered  the  Bering 
or  Commander  Islands,  in  the  far-north  Pacific,  and  landed  upon  them, 
he  also  discovered  this  striking  bird  species.  Its  plumage  both  above  and 
below  was  a  dark  metallic  green,  with  blue  iridescence  on  the  neck  and 
purple  on  the  shoulders.  A  pale  ring  of  naked  skin  around  each  eye  sug- 
gested the  Latin  specific  name  of  this  bird.  The  Pallas  cormorant  became 
totally  extinct,  through  causes  not  positively  known,  about  1852. 

The  Passenger  Pigeon,  —  Ectoptstes  migratoria,  (Linn.). — We 
place  this  bird  in  the  totally-extinct  class,  not  only  because  it  is  extinct 
in  a  wild  state,  but  only  one  solitary  individual,  a  twenty-year-old 
female  in  the  Cincinnati  Zoological  Gardens,  now  remains  alive.  One 
living  specimen  and  a  few  skins,  skeletons  and  stuffed  specimens  are  all 
that  remain  to  show  for  the  uncountable  millions  of  pigeons  that  swarmed 
over  the  United  vStates,  only  yesterday  as  it  were! 

There  is  no  doubt  about  where  those  millions  have  gone.  They  went 
down  and  out  by  systematic,  wholesale  slaughter  for  the  market  and  the 
pot,  before  the  shotguns,  clubs  and  nets  of  the  earliest  American  pot- 
hunters.    Wherever  they  nested  they  were  slaughtered. 

It  is  a  long  and  shameful  story,  but  the  grisly  skeleton  of  its  Michigan 
chapter  can  be  set  forth  in  a  few  words.  In  1869,  from  the  town  of  Hart- 
ford, Mich.,  three  car  loads  of  dead  pigeons  were  shipped  to  market  each 
day  for  forty  days,  making  a  total  of  1 1,880,000  birds.  It  is  recorded  that 
another  Michigan  town  marketed  15,840,000  in  two  years.  (See  Mr. 
W.  B.  Mershon's  book,  "The  Passenger  Pigeon.") 


12  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

Alexander  Wilson,  the  pioneer  American  ornithologist,  was  the  man 
who  seriously  endeavored  to  estimate  by  computations  the  total  number 
of  passenger  pigeons  in  one  flock  that  was  seen  by  him.  Here  is  what  he 
has  said  in  his  "American  Ornithology": 

"To  form  a  rough  estimate  of  the  daily  consumption  of  one  of  these 
immense  flocks,  let  us  first  attempt  to  calculate  the  numbers  of  that  above 
mentioned,  as  scenin  passing  between  Frankfort  and  the  Indiana  territory. 
If  we  suppose  this  column  to  have  been  one  mile  in  breadth  (and  I  believe 
it  to  have  been  much  more)  and  that  it  moved  at  the  rate  of  one  mile  in 
a  minute,  four  hours,  the  time  it  continued  passing,  would  make  its  whole 
length  two  hundred  and  forty  miles.  Again,  supposing  that  each  square 
yard  of  this  moving  body  comprehended  three  pigeons ;  the  square  yards 
in  the  whole  space  multiplied  by  three  would  give  2,230,272,000  pigeons! 
An  almost  inconceivable  multitude,  and  yet  probably  far  below  the  actual 
amount." 

:J:  H<  sK  si:  ;[; 

"Happening  to  go  ashore  one  charming  afternoon,  to  purchase  some 
milk  at  a  house  that  stood  near  the  river,  and  while  talking  with  the 
people  within  doors,  I  was  suddenly  struck  with  astonishment  at  a  loud 
rushing  roar,  succeeded  by  instant  darkness,  which,  on  the  first  moment, 
I  took  for  a  tornado  about  to  overwhelm  the  house  and  every  thing  around 
in  destruction.  The  people  observing  my  surprise,  coolly  said,  '  It  is 
only  the  pigeons!'  On  running  out  I  beheld  (a  flock,  thirty  or  forty 
yards  in  width,  sweeping  along  very  low,  between  the  house  and  the 
mountain  or  height  that  formed  the  second  bank  of  the  river.  These 
continued  passing  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  at  length 
varied  their  bearing  so  as  to  pass  over  the  mountains,  behind  which  they 
disappeared  before  the  rear  came  up. 

' '  In  the  Atlantic  States,  though  they  never  appear  in  .such  unparalleled 
multitudes,  they  are  sometiines  very  numerous;  and  great  havoc  is  then 
made  amongst  them  with  the  gun,  the  clap-net,  and  various  other  im- 
plements of  destruction.  As  soon  as  it  is  ascertained  in  a  town  that  the 
pigeons  are  flying  numerously  in  the  neighborhood,  the  gunners  rise 
en  masse;  the  clap-nets  are  spread  out  on  suitable  situations,  commonly 
on  an  open  height  in  an  old  buckwheat  field,  four  or  five  live  pigeons, 
with  their  eyelids  sewed  tip*  are  fastened  on  a  movable  stick,  a  small 
hut  of  branches  is  fitted  up  for  the  fowler  at  the  distance  of  forty  or  fifty 
yards.  By  the  pulling  of  a  string,  the  stick  on  which  the  pigeons  rest  is 
alternately  elevated  and  depressed,  which  produces  a  fltittering  of  their 
wings,  similar  to  that  of  birds  alighting.  This  being  perceived  by  the 
passing  flocks,  they  descend  with  great  rapidity,  and  finding  corn,  buck- 
wheat, etc,  strewed  about,  begin  to  feed,  and  are  instantly,  by  the  pulling 
of  a  cord,  covered  by  the  net.  In  this  manner  ten,  twenty,  and  even 
thirt}'  dozen    haxe    been  caught  at  one  sweep.      Meantime  the  air  is 

*To-day,  we  think  that  the  fowlers  of  the  rocollos  of  northern  Italy  are  ver\-  cruel 
in  their  methods  of  catching  song-birds  wholesale  for  the  market  (chapter  xi) ;  but  our 
own  countrymen  of  Wilson's  day  were  just  as  cruel  in  the  method  described  above. 


EXTINCT  SPECIES  13 

darkened  with  large  bodies  of  them  moving  in  various  directions;    the 

woods  also  swarm  with  them  in  search  of  acorns,  and  the  thundering  of 

musquetry  is  perpetual  on  all  sides  from  morning  to  night.    Wagon  loads 

of  them  are  poured  into  market,  where  they  sell  from  fifty  to  twenty-five 

and  even  twelve  cents  per  dozen;    and  pigeons  become  the  order  of  the 

day  at   dinner,    breakfast   and   supper,   until   the   very   name   becomes 

sickening." 

***** 

The  range  of  the  passenger  pigeon  covered  nearly  the  whole  United 
States  from  the  Atlantic  coast  westward  to  the  Rocky  Mountains.  A 
few  bold  pigeons  crossed  the  Rocky  Mountains  into  Oregon,  northern 
California  and  Washington,  but  only  as  "stragglers,"  few  and  far  be- 
tween. The  wide  range  of  this  bird  was  worthy  of  a  species  that  existed 
in  millions,  and  it  was  persecuted  literally  all  along  the  line.  The  greatest 
slaughter  was  in  Michigan,  Ohio  and  Pennsylvania.  In  1848  Massa- 
chusetts gravely  passed  a  law  protecting  the  netters  of  wild  pigeons  from 
foreign  interference!  There  was  a  fine  of  $10  for  damaging  nets,  or 
frightening  pigeons  away  from  them.  This  was  on  the  theory  that  the 
pigeons  were  so  abundant  they  could  not  by  any  possibilit}^  ever  become 
scarce,  and  that  pigeon-slaughter  was  a  legitimate  industry. 

In  1867,  the  State  of  New  York  found  that  the  wild  pigeon  needed 
protection,  and  enacted  a  law  to  that  effect.  The  year  1868  was  the  last 
year  in  which  great  numbers  of  passenger  pigeons  nested  in  that  vState. 
Eaton,  in  "The  Birds  of  New  York,"  said  that  "millions  of  birds  occupied 
the  timber  along  Bell's  Run,  near  Ceres,  Alleghany  County,  on  the 
Pennsylvania  line." 

In  1870,  Massachusetts  gave  pigeons  protection  except  during  an 
"open  season,"  and  in  1878  Pennsylvania  elected  to  protect  pigeons  on 
their  nesting  grounds. 

The  passenger  pigeon  millions  were  destroyed  so  quickly,  and  so 
thoroughly  en  masse,  that  the  American  people  utterly  failed  to  com- 
prehend it,  and  for  thirty  years  obstinately  refused  to  believe  that  the 
species  had  been  suddenly  wiped  off  the  map  of  North  America.  There 
was  years  of  talk  about  the  great  flocks  having  "taken  refuge  in  South 
America,"  or  in  Mexico,  and  being  still  in  existence.  There  were  surmises 
about  their  having  all  "gone  out  to  sea,"  and  perished  on  the  briny  deep. 

A  thousand  times,  at  least,  wild  pigeons  have  been  "reported"  as 
having  been  "seen."  These  rumors  have  covered  nearly  every  northern 
state,  the  whole  of  the  southwest,  and  California.  For  years  and  years 
we  have  been  patiently  writing  letters  to  explain  over  and  over  that  the 
band-tailed  pigeon  of  the  Pacific  coast,  and  the  red-billed  pigeon  of 
Arizona  and  the  southwest  are  neither  of  them  the  passenger  pigeon, 
and  never  can  be. 

There  was  a  long  period  wherein  we  believed  many  of  the  pigeon 
reports  that  came  from  the  states  where  the  birds  once  were  most 
numerous;  but  that  period  has  absolutely  passed.  During  the  past  five 
years  large  cash  rewards,  aggregating  about  $5000,  have  been  offered  for 


14  OUR  VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

the  discovery  of  one  nesting  pair  of  genuine  passenger  pigeons.  Many- 
persons  have  claimed  this  reward  (of  Professor  C.  F.  Hodge,  of  Clark 
University,  Worcester,  Mass.),  and  many  claims  have  been  investigated. 
The  results  have  disclosed  many  mourning  doves,  but  not  one  pigeon. 
Now  we  understand  that  the  quest  is  closed,  and  hope  has  been  aban- 
doned. 

The  passenger  pigeon  is  a  dead  species.  The  last  wild  specimen  (so 
we  believe)  that  ever  will  reach  the  hands  of  man,  was  taken  near  Detroit, 
Michigan,  on  Sept.  14,  1908,  and  mounted  by  C.  Campion.  That  is  the 
one  definite,  positive  record  of  the  past  ten  years. 

The  fate  of  this  species  should  be  a  lasting  lesson  to  the  world  at  large. 
Any  wild  bird  or  mammal  species  can  be  exterminated  by  commerciali 
interests  in  twenty  years  time,  or  less. 

The  Eskimo  Curlew, — Nmnenius  borealis,  (Forst.).  This  valuable 
game  bird  once  ranged  all  along  the  Atlantic  coast  of  North  America, 
and  wherever  found  it  was  prized  for  the  table.  It  preferred  the  fields 
and  meadows  to  the  shore  lines,  and  was  the  companion  of  the  plovers 
of  the  uplands,  expecially  the  golden  plover.  "About  1872,"  says  Mr. 
Forbush,  "there  was  a  great  flight  of  these  birds  on  Cape  Cod  and 
Nantucket.  They  were  every  where ;  and  enormous  numbers  were  killed. 
They  could  be  bought  of  boys  at  six  cents  apiece.  Two  men  killed  $300 
worth  of  these  birds  at  that  time." 

Apparently,  that  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the  "dough  bird," 
which  was  another  name  for  this  curlew.  In  1908  Mr.  G.  H.  Mackay 
stated  that  this  bird  and  the  golden  plover  had  decreased  90  per  cent 
in  fifty  years,  and  in  the  last  ten  years  of  that  period  90  per  cent  of  the 
remainder  had  gone.  "Now  (1908),"  says  Mr.  Forbush,  "ornithologists 
believe  that  the  Eskimo  curlew  is  practically  extinct,  as  only  a  few 
specimens  have  been  recorded  since  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century."  The  very  last  record  is  of  two  specimens  collected  at  Waco, 
York  County,  Nebraska,  in  March,  1911,  and  recorded  by  Mr.  August 
Eiche.  Of  course,  it  is  possible  that  other  individuals  may  still  survive; 
but  so  far  as  our  knowledge  extends,  the  species  is  absolutely  dead. 


In  the  West  Indies  and  the  Guadeloupe  Islands,  five  species  of  macaws 
and  parrakeets  have  passed  out  without  any  serious  note  of  their  disap- 
pearance on  the  part  of  the  people  of  the  United  States.  It  is  at  least  time 
to  write  brief  obituary  notices  of  them. 

We  are  indebted  to  the  Hon.  Walter  Rothschild,  of  Tring,  England, 
for  essential  facts  regarding  these  species  as  set  forth  in  his  sumptuous 
work  "Extinct  Birds". 

The  Cuban  Tricolored  Macaw, — Ara  tricolor,  (Gm.).  In  1875, 
when  the  author  visited  Cuba  and  the  Isle  of  Pines,  he  was  informed  by 
Professor  Poey  that  he  was  "about  ten  years  too  late"  to  find  this  fine 
species  alive.  It  was  exterminated  for  food  purposes,  about  1864,  and 
only  four  specimens  are  known  to  be  in  existence. 


16  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

Gosse's  Macaw, — Ara  gossei,  (Roth.). — This  species  once  in- 
habited the  Island  of  Jamaica.  It  was  exterminated  about  1800,  and  so 
far  as  known  not  one  specimen  of  it  is  in  existence. 

Guadeloupe  Macaw, — Ara  guadeloupcnsis,  (Clark). — All  that  is 
known  of  the  life  history  of  this  large  bird  is  that  once  it  inhabited  the 
Guadeloupe  Islands.  The  date  and  history  of  its  disappearance  are  both 
unknown,  and  there  is  not  one  specimen  of  it  in  existence. 

Yellow-Winged  Green  Parrot, — Amazona  olivacea,  (Gm.). — Of 
the  history  of  this  Guadeloupe  species,  also,  nothing  is  known,  and  there 
appear  to  be  no  specimens  of  it  in  existence. 

Purple  Guadeloupe  Parrakeet, — Anodorhynchus  purpurescens, 
(Rothschild). — This  is  another  dead  species,  that  once  lived  in  the  Guade- 
loupe Islands,  and  passed  away  silently  and  unnoticed  at  the  time,  leaving 
no  records  of  its  existence,  and  no  specimens. 

The  Carolina  Parrakeet, — Conuropsis  carolinensis,  (Linn.),  brings 
us  down  to  the  present  moment.  To  this  charming  little  green-and- 
yellow  bird,  we  are  in  the  very  act  of  bidding  everlasting  farewell.  Ten 
specimens  remain  alive  in  captivity,  six  of  which  are  in  the  Cincinnati 
Zoological  Garden,  three  are  in  the  Washington  Zoological  Park  and  one 
is  in  the  New  York  Zoological  Park. 

Regarding  wild  specimens,  it  is  possible  that  some  yet  remain,  in 
some  obscure  and  neglected  corner  of  Florida;  but  it  is  extremely  doubtful 
whether  the  world  ever  will  find  any  of  them  alive.  Mrs.  Minnie  Moore 
Willson,  of  Kissimee,  Fla.,  reports  the  species  as  totally  extinct  in  Florida. 
Unless  we  would  strain  at  a  gnat,  we  may  just  as  well  enter  this  species 
in  the  dead  class;  for  there  is  no  reason  to  hope  that  any  more  wild 
specimens  ever  will  be  found. 

The  former  range  of  this  species  embraced  the  whole  southeastern 
and  central  United  States.  From  the  Gulf  it  extended  to  Albany,  N.  Y., 
northern  Ohio  and  Indiana,  northern  Iowa,  Nebraska,  central  Colorado 
and  eastern  Texas,  from  which  it  will  be  seen  that  once  it  was  widely 
distributed.  It  was  shot  because  it  was  destructive  to  fruit  and  for  its 
plumage,  and  many  were  trapped  alive,  to  be  kept  in  captivity.  I  know 
that  one  colony,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Sebastian  River,  east  coast  of 
Florida,  was  exterminated  in  1898  by  a  local  hunter,  and  I  regret  to  say 
that  it  was  done  in  the  hope  of  selling  the  living  birds  to  a  New  York 
bird-dealer.  By  holding  bags  over  the  holes  in  which  the  birds  were 
nesting,  the  entire  colony,  of  about  16  birds,  was  caught. 

Everywhere  else  than  in  Florida,  the  Carolina  parrakeet  has  long  been 
extinct.  In  1904  a  flock  of  13  birds  was  seen  near  Lake  Okechobee;  but 
in  Florida  many  calamities  can  overtake  a  flock  of  birds  in  eight  years. 
The  birds  in  captivity  are  not  breeding,  and  so  far  as  perpetuation  by 
them  is  concerned,  they  are  only  one  remove  from  mounted  museum 
specimens.  This  parrakeet  is  the  only  member  of  its  order  that  ranged 
into  the  United  States  during  our  own  times,  and  with  its  disappearance 
the  Order  Psittaciformes  totally  disappears  from  our  country. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE   NEXT   CANDIDATES   FOR   OBLIVION 

In  the  world  of  human  beings,  murder  is  the  most  serious  of  all  crimes. 
To  take  from  a  man  that  which  no  one  ever  can  restore  to  him,  his  life, 
is  murder;   and  its  penalty  is  the  most  severe  of  all  penalties. 

There  are  circumstances  under  which  the  killing  of  a  wild  animal 
may  be  so  wanton,  so  revolting  and  so  utterly  reprehensible  that  the  act 
may  justly  be  classed  as  murder.  The  man  who  kills  a  walrus  from  the 
deck  of  a  steamer  that  he  knows  will  not  stop ;  the  man  who  wantonly 
killed  the  whole  colony  of  hippopotami  that  Mr.  Dugmore  photographed 
in  life ;  the  man  who  last  winter  shot  bull  elk  in  Wyoming  for  their  two 
ugly  and  shapeless  teeth,  and  the  man  who  wantonly  shot  down  a  half- 
tame  deer  "for  fun"  near  Carmel,  Putnam  County,  New  York,  in  the 
summer  of  1912, — all  were  guilty  of  murdering  wild  animals. 

The  murder  of  a  wild  animal  species  consists  in  taking  from  it  that 
which  man  with  all  his  cunning  and  all  his  preserves  and  breeding  can 
not  give  back  to  it, — its  God-given  place  in  the  ranks  of  Living  Things. 
Where  is  man's  boasted  intelligence,  or  his  sense  of  proportion,  that 
every  man  does  not  see  the  monstrous  moral  obliquity  involved  in  the 
destruction  of  a  species ! 

If  the  beautiful  Taj  Mehal  at  Agra  should  be  destroyed  by  vandals, 
the  intelligent  portion  of  humanity  would  be  profoundly  shocked,  even 
though  the  hand  of  man  could  at  will  restore  the  shrine  of  sorrowing  love. 
To-day  the  great  Indian  rhinoceros,  certainly  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
four-footed  animals  still  surviving,  is  actually  being  exterminated;  and 
even  the  people  of  India  and  England  are  viewing  it  with  an  indifference 
that  is  appalling.  Of  course  there  are  among  Englishmen  a  great  many 
sportsmen  and  several  zoologists  who  really  care;  but  they  do  not  con- 
stitute one-tenth  of  one  per-cent  of  the  men  who  ought  to  care ! 

In  the  museums,  we  stand  in  awe  and  wonder  before  the  fossil  skele- 
ton of  the  Megatherium,  and  the  savants  struggle  to  unveil  its  past, 
while  the  equally  great  and  marvelous  Rhinoceros  indicus  is  being  rushed 
into  oblivion.  We  marvel  at  the  fossil  shell  of  the  gigantic  turtle  called 
Collosochelys  atlas,  while  the  last  living  representatives  of  the  gigantic 
land  tortoises  are  being  exterminated  in  the  Galapagos  Islands  and  the 
Sychelles,  for  their  paltry  oil  and  meat;  and  only  one  man  (Hon.  Walter 
Rothschild)  is  doing  aught  to  save  any  of  them  in  their  haunts,  where 
they  can  breed.  The  dodo  of  Mauritius  was  exterminated  by  swine, 
whose  bipedal  descendents  have  exterminated  many  other  species  since 
that  time. 


18  OUR  VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

A  failure  to  appreciate  either  the  beauty  or  the  value  of  our  living 
birds,  quadrupeds  and  fishes  is  the  hall-mark  of  arrested  mental  develop- 
ment and  ignorance.  The  victim  is  not  always  to  blame;  but  in  this  prac- 
tical world  the  cornerstone  of  legal  jurisprudence  is  the  inexorable  prin- 
ciple that  "ignorance  of  the  law  excuses  no  man." 

These  pages  are  addressed  to  my  countrymen,  and  the  world  at 
large,  not  as  a  reproach  upon  the  dead  Past  which  is  gone  beyond  recall, 
but  in  the  faint  hope  of  somewhere  and  somehow  arousing  forces  that 
will  reform  the  Present  and  save  the  Futiire.  The  extermination  of  wild 
species  that  now  is  proceeding  throughout  the  world,  is  a  dreadful  thing. 
It  is  not  only  injurious  to  the  economy  of  the  world,  but  it  is  a  shame 
and  a  disgrace  to  the  civilized  portion  of  the  human  race. 

It  is  of  little  avail  that  I  should  here  enter  into  a  detailed  description 
of  each  species  that  now  is  being  railroaded  into  oblivion.  The  book- 
shelves of  intelligent  men  and  women  are  filled  with  beautiful  and  ade- 
quate books  on  birds  and  quadrupeds,  wherein  the  status  of  each  spe- 
cies may  be  determined,  almost  without  effort.  There  is  time  and  space 
only  in  which  to  notice  the  most  prominent  of  the  doomed  species,  and 
perhaps  discuss  a  few  examples  by  way  of  illustration.     Here  is  a 

Partial  List  of  North  American  Birds  Threatened  with 
Early  Extermination 

Whooping  Crane  Pectoral  Sandpiper 

Trumpeter  Swan  Black-Capped  Petrel 

American  Flamingo  American  Egret 

Roseate  Spoonbill  Snowy  Egret 

Scarlet  Ibis  Wood  Duck 

Long-Billed  Curlew  Band-Tailed  Pigeon 

HUDSONIAN    GODWIT  HeATH    HeN 

Upland  Plover  Sage  Grouse 

Red-Breasted  Sandpiper  Prairie  Sharp-Tail 

Golden  Plover  Pinnated  Grouse 

DowiTCHER  White-Tailed  Kite 

WiLLET 

The  Whooping  Crane. — This  splendid  bird  will  almost  certainly 
be  the  next  North  American  species  to  be  totally  exterminated.  It  is 
the  only  new  world  rival  of  the  numerous  large  and  showy  cranes  of  the 
old  world;  for  the  sandhill  crane  is  not  in  the  same  class  as  the  white, 
black  and  blue  giants  of  Asia.  We  will  part  from  our  stately  Grus  ameri- 
canus  with  profound  sorrow,  for  on  this  continent  we  ne'er  shall  see  his 
like  again. 

The  well-nigh  total  disappearance  of  this  species  has  been  brought 
close  home  to  us  by  the  fact  that  there  are  less  than  half  a  dozen  individ- 
uals alive  in  captivity,  while  in  a  wild  state  the  bird  is  so  rare  as  to  be 
quite  unobtainable.     For  example,  for  nearly  five  years  an  English  gen- 


CANDIDATES  FOR  OBLIVION 


19 


WHOOPING  CRANES  IN  THE  ZOOLOGICAL  PARK 

Very  Soon  this  Species  will  Become  Totally  Extinct. 


tlemen  has  been  offering  $1,000  for  a  pair,  and  the  most  enterprising  bird 
collector  in  America  has  been  quite  unable  to  fill  the  order.  So  far  as 
our  information  extends,  the  last  living  specimen  captured  was  taken 
six  or  seven  years  ago.  The  last  wild  birds  seen  and  reported  were 
observed  by  Ernest  Thompson  Seton,  who  saw  five  below  Fort  Mc- 
Murray,  Saskatchewan,  October  16th,  1907,  and  by  John  F.  Ferry,  who 
saw  one  at  Big  Quill  Lake,  Saskatchewan,  in  June,  1909. 

The  range  of  this  species  once  covered  the  eastern  two-thirds  of  the 
continent  of  North  America.  It  extended  from  the  Atlantic  coast  to  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  from  Great  Bear  Lake  to  Florida  and  Texas. 
Eastward  of  the  Mississippi  it  has  for  twenty  years  been  totally  extinct, 
and  the  last  specimens  taken  alive  were  found  in  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

The  Trumpeter  Swan. — Six  years  ago  this  species  was  regarded  as 
so  nearly  extinct  that  a  doubting  ornithological  club  of  Boston  refused 
to  believe  on  hearsay  evidence  that  the  New  York  Zoological  Park  con- 
tained a  pair  of  living  birds,  and  a  committee  was  appointed,  to  investi- 
gate in  person,  and  report.  Even  at  that  time,  skins  were  worth  all  the 
way  from  $100  to  $150  each;  and  when  swan  skins  sell  at  either  of  those 
figures  it  is  because  there  are  people  who  believe  that  the  species  either  is 
on  the  verge  of  extinction,  or  has  passed  it.     The  pair  referred  to  above 


20  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

was  acquired  in  1900.  Since  that  time,  Dr.  Leonard  C.  Sanford  pro- 
cured in  1910  two  living  birds  from  a  bird  dealer  who  obtained  them  on 
the  coast  of  Virginia.  We  have  done  our  utmost  to  induce  our  pair  to 
breed,  but  without  any  further  results  than  nest-building. 

The  loss  of  the  trumpeter  swan  (Olor  americanus)  will  not  be  so 
great,  nor  felt  so  keenly,  as  the  blotting  out  of  the  whooping  crane.  It 
so  closely  resembles  the  whistling  swan  that  only  an  ornithologist  can 
recognize  the  difference,  a  yellow  spot  on  the  side  of  the  upper  mandible, 
near  its  base.  The  whistling  swan  yet  remains  in  fair  numbers,  but  it  is 
to  be  feared  that  soon  it  will  go  as  the  trumpeter  has  gone. 

The  American  Flamingo,  Scarlet  Ibis  and  Roseate  Spoonbill  are 
three  of  the  most  beautiful  and  curious  water-haunting  birds  of  the 
tropics.  Once  all  three  species  inhabited  portions  of  the  southern  United 
States ;  but  now  all  three  are  gone  from  our  star-spangled  bird  fauna. 
The  brilliant  scarlet  plumage  of  the  flamingo  and  ibis,  and  the  exquisite 
pink  rose-color  and  white  of  the  spoonbill  naturally  attracted  the  evil 
eyes  of  the  "milliner's  taxidermists"  and  other  bird-butchers.  From 
Florida  these  birds  quickly  vanished.  The  six  great  breeding  colonies  of 
Flamingoes  on  Andros  Island,  Bahamas,  have  been  reduced  to  two,  and 
from  Prof.  E.  A.  Goeldi,  of  the  State  Museum  Goeldi,  Para,  Brazil,  have 
come  bitter  complaints  of  the  slaughter  of  scarlet  ibises  in  South  Amer- 
ica by  plume-hunters  in  European  pay. 

I  know  not  how  other  naturalists  regard  the  future  of  the  three  spe- 
cies named  above,  but  my  opinion  is  that  unless  the  European  feather 
trade  is  quickly  stopped  as  to  wild  plumage,  they  are  absolutely  certain 
to  be  shot  into  total  oblivion,  within  a  very  few  years.  The  plumage  of 
these  birds  has  so  much  commercial  value,  for  fishermen's  flies  as  well  as 
for  women's  hats,  that  the  birds  will  be  killed  as  long  as  their  feathers 
can  be  sold  and  any  birds  remain  alive. 

Zoologically,  the  flamingo  is  the  most  odd  and  interesting  bird  on  the 
American  continent  except  the  emperor  penguin.  Its  beak  baffles  de- 
scription, its  long  legs  and  webbed  feet  are  a  joke,  its  nesting  habits  are 
amazing,  and  its  food  habits  the  despair  of  most  zoological-garden  keep- 
ers. Millions  of  flamingos  inhabit  the  shores  of  a  number  of  small  lakes 
in  the  interior  of  equatorial  East  Africa,  but  that  species  is  not  brilliant 
scarlet  all  over  the  neck  and  head,  as  is  the  case  with  our  species. 

If  the  American  flamingo,  scarlet  ibis  and  roseate  spoonbill,  one  or 
all  of  them,  are  to  be  saved  from  total  extinction,  efforts  must  be  made 
in  each  of  the  countries  in  which  they  breed  and  live.  Their  preserva- 
tion is  distinctly  a  burden  upon  the  countries  of  South  America  that  lie 
eastward  of  the  Andes,  and  on  Yucatan,  Cuba  and  the  Bahamas.  The 
time  has  come  when  the  Government  of  the  Bahama  Islands  should 
sternly  forbid  the  killing  of  any  more  flamingos,  on  any  pretext  what- 
ever ;  and  if  the  capture  of  living  specimens  for  exhibition  purposes  mili- 
tates against  the  welfare  of  the  colonies,  they  should  forbid  that  also. 

The  Upland  Plover,  or  "Bartramian  Sandpiper." — Apparently 
this  is  the  next  shore-bird  species  that  will  follow  the  Eskimo  curlew  into 


CANDIDATES  FOR  OBLIVION  21 

oblivion.  Four  years  ago, — a  long  period  for  a  species  that  is  on  the  edge 
of  extermination, — Mr.  E.  H.  Forbush*  wrote  of  it  as  follows: 

"The  Bartramian  Sandpiper,  commonly  known  as  the  Upland  Plover, 
a  bird  which  formerly  bred  on  grassy  hills  all  over  the  State  and  migrated 
southward  along  our  coasts  in  great  flocks,  is  in  imminent  danger  of 
extirpation.  A  few  still  breed  in  Worcester  and  Berkshire  Counties,  or 
Nantucket,  so  there  is  still  a  nucleus  which,  if  protected,  may  save  the 
species.  Five  reports  from  localities  where  this  bird  formerly  bred  give 
it  as  nearing  extinction,  and  four  as  ex.inct.  This  is  one  of  the  most  use- 
ful of  all  birds  in  grass  land,  feeding  largely  on  grasshoppers  and  cutworms. 
It  is  one  of  the  finest  of  all  birds  for  the  table.  An  effort  should  be  made 
at  once  to  save  this  usefiil  species." 

The  Black-Capped  Petrel,  (Aestrelata  hasitata). — This  species  is 
already  recorded  in  the  A.  O.  U.  "Check  list"  as  extinct;  but  it  appears 
that  this  may  not  as  yet  be  absolutely  true.  On  January  1,  1912,  a  strange 
thing  happened.  A  much  battered  and  exhausted  black-capped  petrel 
was  picked  up  alive  in  Central  Park,  New  York,  taken  to  the  menagerie, 
and  kept  there  during  the  few  days  that  it  survived.  When  it  died  it  was 
sent  to  the  American  Museum ;  and  this  may  easily  prove  to  be  the  last 
living  record  for  that  species.  In  reality,  this  species  might  as  well  be 
listed  with  those  totally  extinct.  Formerly  it  ranged  from  the  Antilles 
to  Ohio  and  Ontario,  and  the  causes  of  its  blotting  out  are  not  yet  defi- 
nitely known. 

This  ocean-going  bird  once  had  a  wide  range  overseas  in  the  temper- 
ate areas  of  the  North  Atlantic.  It  is  recorded  from  Ulster  County,  New 
York,  New  Hampshire,  Kentucky,  Ohio,  Virginia  and  Florida.  It  was 
about  of  the  size  of  the  common  tern. 

The  California  Condor,  (Gymnogyps  calif ornianus) . — I  feel  that 
the  existence  of  this  species  hangs  on  a  very  slender  thread.  This  is  due 
to  its  alarmingly  small  range,  the  insignificant  number  of  individuals  now 
living,  the  openness  of  the  species  to  attack,  and  the  danger  of  its  ex- 
tinction by  poison.  Originally  this  remarkable  bird, — the  largest  North 
American  bird  of  prey, — ranged  as  far  northward  as  the  Columbia 
River,  and  southward  for  an  unknown  distance.  Now  its  range  is  reduced 
to  seven  counties  in  southern  California,  although  it  is  said  to  extend 
from  Monterey  Bay  to  Lower  California,  and  eastward  to  Arizona. 

Regarding  the  present  status  and  the  future  of  this  bird,  I  have  been 
greatly  disturbed  in  mind.  When  a  unique  and  zoologically  important 
species  becomes  reduced  in  its  geographic  range  to  a  small  section  of  a 
single  state,  it  seems  to  me  quite  time  for  alarm.  For  some  time  I  have 
counted  this  bird  as  one  of  those  threatened  with  early  extermination, 
and  as  I  think  with  good  reason.  In  view  of  the  swift  calamities  that 
now  seem  able  to  fall  on  species  like  thunderbolts  out  of  clear  skies,  and 
wipe  them  off  the  earth  even  before  we  know  that  such  a  fate  is  impend- 

*" Special  Report  on  the  Decrease  of  Certain  Birds,  and  its  Causes." — IMass.  State 
Board  of  Agriculture,  1908. 


22 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


CALIFORNIA  CONDOR 
Now  Living  in  the  New  York  Zoological  Park. 

ing,  no  species  of  seven-county  distribution  is  safe.  Any  species  that  is 
limited  to  a  few  counties  of  a  single  state  is  liable  to  be  wiped  out  in 
five  years,  by  poison,  or  traps,  or  lack  of  food. 

On  order  to  obtain  the  best  and  also  the  most  conservative  informa- 
tion regarding  this  species,  I  appealed  to  the  Curator  of  the  Museum  of 
Verbetrate  Zoology,  of  the  University  of  California.  Although  written 
in  the  mountain  wilds,  I  promptly  received  the  valuable  contribution 
that  appears  below.  As  a  clear,  precise  and  conservative  survey  of  an 
important  species,  it  is  really  a  model  document. 


The  Status  of  the  California  Condor  in   1912 
By  Joseph  Grinnell 

"To  my  knowledge,  the  California  Condor  has  been  definitely  ob- 
served within  the  past  five  years  in  the  following  California  counties: 
Los  Angeles,  Ventura,  Santa  Barbara,  San  Luis  Obispo,  Monterey,  Kern, 
and  Tulare.  In  parts  of  Ventura,  Santa  Barbara,  San  Luis  Obispo  and 
Kern  counties  the  species  is  still  fairly  common,  for  a  large  bird,  probably 
equal  in  numbers  to  the  golden  eagle  in  those  regions  that  are  suited  to 


CANDIDATES   FOR  OBLIVION  23 

it.  By  suitable  country  I  mean  cattle-raising,  mountainous  territory, 
of  which  there  are  still  vast  areas,  and  which  arc  not  likely  to  be  put  to 
any  other  use  for  a  very  long  time,  if  ever,  on  account  of  the  lack  of  water. 

"While  in  Kern  County  last  April,  I  was  informed  by  a  reliable  man 
who  lives  near  the  Tejon  Rancho  that  he  had  counted  twenty-five  con- 
dors in  a  single  day,  since  January  1  of  the  present  year.  These  were  on 
the  Tejon  Rancho,  which  is  an  enormous  cattle  range  covering  parts 
of  the  Tehachapi  and  San  Emigdio  Mountains. 

"Our  present  state  law  provides  complete  protection  for  the  condor 
and  its  eggs;  and  the  State  Fish  and  Game  Commission,  in  granting 
permits  for  collectors,  always  adds  the  phrase —  '  except  the  California 
condor  and  its  eggs.'  I  know  of  two  special  permits  having  been  issued, 
but  neither  of  these  were  used;  that  is,  no  'specimens'  have  been  taken 
since  1908,  as  far  as  I  am  aware. 

"In  my  travels  about  the  state,  I  have  found  that  practically  every- 
one knows  that  the  condor  is  protected.  Still,  there  is  always  the  hunt- 
ing element  who  do  not  hesitate  to  shoot  anything  alive  and  out  of  the 
ordinary,  and  a  certain  percentage  of  the  condors  are  doubtless  picked 
off  each  year  by  such  criminals.  It  is  possible,  also,  that  the  mercenary 
egg-collector  continues  to  take  his  annual  rents,  though  if  this  is  done 
it  is  kept  very  quiet.  It  is  my  impression  that  the  present  fatalities  from 
all  sources  are  fully  balanced  by  the  natural  rate  of  increase. 

"There  is  one  factor  that  has  militated  against  the  condor  more  than 
any  other  one  thing;  namely,  the  restriction  in  its  food  source.  Its 
forage  range  formerly  included  most  of  the  great  valleys  adjacent  to  its 
mountain  retreats.  But  now  the  valleys  are  almost  entirely  devoted  to 
agriculture,  and  of  course  far  more  thickly  settled  than  formerly. 

"The  mountainous  areas  where  the  condor  is  making  its  last  stand 
seem  to  me  likely  to  remain  adapted  to  the  bird's  existence  for  many 
years, — fifty  years,  if  not  longer.  Of  course,  this  is  conditional  upon  the 
maintenance  and  enforcement  of  the  present  laws.  There  is  also  the 
enlightenment  of  public  sentiment  in  regard  to  the  preservation  of  wild 
life,  which  I  believe  can  be  depended  upon.  This  is  a  matter  of  general 
education,  which  is,  fortunately,  and  with  no  doubt  whatever,  progress- 
ing at  a  quite  perceptible  rate. 

"Yes;  I  should  say  that  the  condor  has  a  fair  chance  to  survive,  in 
limited  numbers. 

"Another  bird  which  in  my  opinion  is  far  nearer  extinction  than  the 
condor,  so  far  as  California  is  concerned,  is  the  white-tailed  kite.  This 
is  a  perfectly  harmless  bird,  but  one  which  harries  over  the  marskes, 
where  it  has  been  an  easy  target  for  the  idle  duck-hunter.  Then,  too, 
its  range  was  limited  to  the  valley  bottoms,  where  htmian  settlement  is 
increasingly  close.  I  know  of  only  two  live  pairs  within  the  state  last 
year ! 

"Finally,  let  me  remark  that  the  rate  of  increase  of  the  California 
condor  is  not  one  whit  less  than  that  of  the  band-tailed  pigeon!     Yet, 


24  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

there  is  no  protection  at  all  for  the  latter  in  this  state,  even  in  the  nesting- 
season;  and  thousands  were  shot  last  spring,  in  the  unprecedented  con- 
centration of  the  species  in  the  southern  coast  counties.  (See  Chambers' 
in  The  Condor  for  May,  1912,  p.  108.)" 


The  California  Condor  is  one  of  the  only  two  species  of  condor  now 
living,  and  it  is  the  only  one  found  in  North  America.  As  a  matter  of 
national  pride,  and  a  duty  to  posterity,  the  people  of  the  United  States 
can  far  better  afford  to  lose  a  million  dollars  from  their  national  treasury 
than  to  allow  that  bird  to  becom.e  extinct.  Its  preservation  for  all  com- 
ing time  is  distinctly  a  white  m.an's  burden  upon  the  state  of  California. 
The  laws  now  in  force  for  the  condor's  protection  are  not  half  adequate  I 
I  think  there  is  no  law  by  which  the  accidental  poisoning  of  those  birds, 
by  baits  put  out  for  coyotes  and  foxes,  can  be  stopped.  A  law  to  prevent 
the  use  of  poisoned  meat  baits  anywhere  in  southern  California,  should 
be  enacted  at  the  next  session  of  California's  legislature.  The  fine  for 
molesting  a  condor  should  be  raised  to  $500,  with  a  long  prison-term  as 
an  alternative.  A  competent,  interested  game  warden  should  be  ap- 
pointed solely  for  the  protection  of  the  condors.  It  is  time  to  count  those 
birds,  keep  them  under  observation,  and  have  an  annual  report  upon 
their  condition. 

The  Heath  Hen. — But  for  the  protection  that  has  been  provided  for 
it  by  the  ornithologists  of  Massachusetts,  and  particularly  Dr.  George  W. 
Field,  William  Brewster  and  John  E.  Thayer,  the  heath  hen  or  eastern 
pinnated  grouse  would  years  ago  have  become  totally  extinct.  New 
York,  New  Jersey  and  Massachusetts  began  to  protect  that  species 
entirely  too  late.  It  was  given  five-year  close  seasons,  without  avail. 
Then  it  was   given  ten-year  close  seasons,  but  it  was  too  late! 

To-day,  the  species  exists  only  in  one  locality,  the  island  of  Martha's 
Vineyard,  and  concerning  its  present  status,  Mr.  Forbush  has  recently 
furnished  us  the  following  clear  statement : 

The  heath  hens  increased  for  two  years  after  the  Massachusetts  Fish  and  Game 
Commission  estabHshed  a  reservation  for  them,  but  in  1911  they  had  not  increased. 
There  are  probably  about  two  hundred  birds  extant. 

I  found  a  great  many  marsh  hawks  on  the  Island  and  the  Commission  did  not  kill 
them,  believing  them  to  be  beneficial.  In  watching  them,  I  concluded  that  they  were 
catching  the  young  heath  hens.  A  large  number  of  these  hawks  have  been  shot  and 
their  stomachs  sent  to  Washington  for  examination,  as  I  was  too  busy  at  the  time  to 
examine  them.  So  far  as  I  know,  no  report  of  the  examination  has  been  made,  but  Dr. 
Field  himself  examined  a  few  of  the  stomachs  and  found  the  remains  of  the  heath  hen 
in  some. 

The  warden  now  says  that  during  the  past  two  years,  the  heath  hen  has  not  in- 
creased, but  I  can  give  you  no  definite  evidence  of  this.    I  am  quite  sure  they  are  being 
killed  by  natives  of  the  island  and  that  at  least  one  collector  supplies  birds  for  museums. 
We  are  trying  to  get  evidence  of  this. 

I  believe  if  the  heath  hen  is  to  be  increased  in  numbers  and  brought  back  to  this 
country,  we  shall  have  to  have  more  than  one  warden  on  the  reservation  and,  eventually, 
we  shall  have  to  establish  the  bird  on  the  mainland  also. 


CANDIDATES  FOR  OBLIVION 


25 


l-rom  the  "American  Natural  History" 

PINNATED  GROUSE,  OR  "PRAIRIE  CHICKEN" 


The  Pinnated  Grouse,  Sage  Grouse  and  Prairie  Sharp-Tail. — 
In  view  of  the  fate  of  the  grouse  of  the  United  States,  as  it  has  been 
wrought  out  thus  far  in  all  the  more  thickly  settled  areas,  and  particu- 
larly in  view  of  the  history  of  the  heath  hen,  we  have  no  choice  but  to 
regard  all  three  of  the  species  named  above  as  absolutely  certain  to 
become  totally  extinct,  within  a  short  period  of  years,  unless  the  condi- 
tions surrounding  them  are  immediately  and  radically  changed  for  the 
better.  Personally,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  gunners  and  game-hogs  of 
Minnesota,  Montana,  Nebraska,  Idaho,  Washington,  Oregon  and  Cali- 
fornia will  permit  any  one  of  those  species  to  be  saved. 

If  the  present  open  seasons  prevail  in  the  states  that  I  have  men- 
tioned above,  no  power  on  earth  can  save  those  three  species  of  grouse 
from  the  fate  of  the  heath  hen.  To-day  their  representatives  exist  only 
in  small  shreds  and  patches,  and  from  fully  nineteen-twentieths  of  their 
original  ranges  they  are  forever  gone. 

The  sage  grouse  will  be  the  first  species  to  go.  It  is  the  largest,  the 
most  conspicuous,  the  one  most  easily  found,  and  the  biggest  mark  for 
the  gunner.  Those  who  have  seen  this  bird  in  its  native  sage-brush  well 
understand  how  fatally  it  is  exposed  to  slaughter. 

Many  appeals  have  been  made  in  behalf  of  the  pinnated  grouse ;  but 
the  open  seasons  continue.  The  gunners  of  the  states  in  which  a  few 
remnants  still  exist  are  determined  to  have  them,  all;  and  the  state 
legislatures  seem  disposed  to  allow  the  killers  to  have  their  way.     It 


26 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


SAGE  GROUSE 
The  First  of  the  Upland  Game  Birds  that 
will  Become  Extinct 


may  be  however,  that  like 
New  York  with  the  heath 
hen,  they  will  arouse  and  vir- 
tuously lock  the  stable  door — 
after  the  horse  has  been  stolen ! 

The  Snowy  Egre 
AND  American  E- 
GRET,  (Egretta  candi- 
dissima  and  Herodias 
egretta). — These  un- 
fortunate birds,  curs- 
ed for  all  time  by  the 
commerciall y  valu- 
able *'  aigrette  " 
plumes  that  they 
bear,  have  had  a  very 
narrow  escape  from 
total  extinction  in  the  United 
States,  despite  all  the  efforts 
made  to  save  them.  The 
"plume-hunters "  of  the  milli- 
nery trade  have  been,  and  still 
are,  determined  to  have  the 
last  feather  and  the  last  drop  of  egret  blood.  In  an  effort  to  stop  the 
slaughter  in  at  least  one  locality  in  Florida,  Warden  Guy  Bradley  was- 
killed  by  a  plume-hunter,  who  of  course  escaped  all  punishment  through 
the  heaven-born  "sympathy"  of  a  local  jury. 

Of  the  bloody  egret  slaughter  in  Florida,  not  one-tenth  of  the  whole 
story  ever  has  been  told.  Millions  of  adult  birds, — all  there  were, — were 
killed  in  the  breeding  season,  when  the  plumes  were  ripe  for  the  market; 
and  millions  of  young  birds  starved  in  their  nests.  It  was  a  common 
thing  for  a  rookery  of  several  hundred  birds  to  be  attacked  by  the  plume- 
hunters,  and  in  two  or  three  days  utterly  destroyed.  The  same  bloody 
work  is  going  on  to-day  in  Venezuela  and  Brazil;  and  the  stories  and 
"affidavits"  stating  that  the  millions  of  egret  plumes  being  shipped  an- 
nually from  those  countries  are  "shed  feathers,"  "picked  up  off  the 
ground,"  are  absolute  lies.  The  men  who  have  sworn  to  those  lies  are 
perjurers,  and  should  be  punished  for  their  crim.es.      (See  Chapter  XIII). 

By  1908,  the  plume-hunters  had  so  far  won  the  fight  for  the  egrets, 
that  Florida  had  been  swept  almost  as  bare  of  these  birds  as  the  Colorado' 
desert. 

Until  Mr.  E.  A.  Mcllhenny's  egret  preserve,  at  Avery  Island,, 
Louisiana,  became  a  pronounced  success,  we  had  believed  that  our  twO' 
egrets  soon  would  become  totally  extinct  in  the  United  States.  But  Mr. 
Mcllhenny  has  certainly  saved  those  birds  to  our  fauna.  In  1892  he- 
started  an  egret  and  heron  preserve,  close  beside  his  house  on  Avery  Is- 


28  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

land.  By  1900  it  was  an  established  success.  To-day  20,000  pairs  of 
egrets  and  herons  are  living  and  breeding  in  that  bird  refuge,  and  the 
two  egret  species  are  safe  in  at  least  one  spot  in  our  own  country. 

Three  years  ago,  I  think  there  were  not  many  bird-lovers  in  the 
United  States,  who  believed  it  possible  to  prevent  the  total  extinction 
of  both  egrets  from  our  fauna.  All  the  known  rookeries  accessible  to 
plume-hunters  had  been  totally  destroyed.  Two  years  ago,  the  secret 
discovery  of  several  small,  hidden  colonies  prompted  William  Dutcher, 
President  of  the  National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies,  and  Mr.  T. 
Gilbert  Pearson,  Secretary,  to  attempt  the  protection  of  those  colonies. 
With  a  fund  contributed  for  the  purpose,  wardens  were  hired  and 
duly  commissioned.  As  previously  stated,  one  of  those  wardens  was 
shot  dead  in  cold  blood  by  a  plume  hunter.  The  task  of  guarding  swamp 
rookeries  from  the  attacks  of  money-hungry  desperadoes  to  whom  the 
accursed  plumes  were  worth  their  weight  in  gold,  is  a  very  chancy  pro- 
ceeding. There  is  now  one  warden  in  Florida  who  says  that  "before  they 
get  my  rookery  they  will  first  have  to  get  me." 

Thus  far  the  protective  work  of  the  Audubon  Association  has  been 
successful.  Now  there  are  twenty  colonies,  which  contain  all  told,  about 
5,000  egrets  and  about  120,000  herons  and  ibises  which  are  guarded  by 
the  Audubon  wardens.  One  of  the  most  important  is  on  Bird  Island,  a 
mile  out  in  Orange  Lake,  central  Florida,  and  it  is  ably  defended  by 
Oscar  E.  Baynard.  To-day,  the  plume  hunters  who  do  not  dare  to 
raid  the  guarded  rookeries  are  trying  to  study  out  the  lines  of  flight  of 
the  birds,  to  and  from  their  feeding-grounds,  and  shoot  them  in  transit. 
Their  motto  is — "Anything  to  beat  the  law,  and  get  the  plumes."  It  is 
there  that  the  state  of  Florida  should  take  part  in  the  war. 

The  success  of  this  campaign  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  last  year  a 
number  of  egrets  were  seen  in  eastern  Massachusetts, — for  the  first  time 
in  many  years.  And  so  to-day  the  question  is,  can  the  wardens  con- 
tinue to  hold  the  plume-hunters  at  bay  ? 

The  Wood-Duck  {Aix  sponsa),  by  many  bird-lovers  regarded  as 
the  most  beautiful  of  all  American  birds,  is  threatened  with  extinction 
in  all  the  states  that  it  still  inhabits  with  the  exception  of  eight.  Long 
ago  (1901)  the  U.  S.  Biological  Survey  sounded  a  general  alarm  for  this 
species  by  the  issue  of  a  special  bulletin  regarding  its  disappearance,  and 
advising  its  protection  by  long  close  seasons.  To  their  everlasting  honor, 
eight  states  responded,  by  the  enactment  of  long  close-season  laws.  This- 
is  the 

Roll  of  Honor 

Connecticut  New  Jersey 

Maine  New  York 

Massachusetts  Vermont 

New  Hampshire  West  Virginia 


CANDIDATES  FOR  OBLIVION 


29 


WOOD  DUCK 
Regularly  Killed  as  "Food"  in  15  States 


And  how  is  it  with  the 
other  states  that  number 
the  wood- duck  in  their 
avian  faunas  ?  I  am  asham- 
ed to  tell ;  but  it  is  necessary 
that  the  truth  should  be 
known. 

Surely  we  will  find  that 
if  the  other  states  have 
not  the  grace  to  protect 
this  bird  on  account  of  its 
exquisite  beauty  they  will 
not  penalize  it  by  extra 
long  open  seasons. 

A  number  of  them  have 
taken  pains  to  provide  extra 
long  OPEN  seasons  on  this 
species,  usually  of  five  or 
six  months!!  And  this  for 
a  bird  so  exquisitely  beau- 
tiful that  shooting  it  for 
the  table  is  like  dining  on 
birds  of  paradise.  Here  is 
a  partial  list  of  the 


Wood-Duck-Eating  States  (1912) 


Georgia  kills  and  eats  the  Wood-duck   from 

Sept. 

1, 

to  Feb. 

1 

Indiana,  Iowa  and  Kansas 

do    so        " 

Sept. 

1, 

to   Apr. 

15 

Kentucky,  (extra  long!) 

does  so 

Aug. 

15, 

to   Apr. 

1 

Louisiana  (extra  long!) 

Sept. 

1, 

to    Mar. 

1 

Maryland 

Nov. 

1, 

to   Apr. 

1 

Michigan 

Oct. 

15, 

to   Jan. 

1 

Nebraska    (extra  long!) 

Sept. 

1, 

to   Apr. 

1 

Ohio 

Sept. 

1, 

to   Jan. 

1 

Pennsylvania,  (extra   long!) 

Sept. 

1, 

to  Apr. 

11 

Rhode  Island, 

Aug. 

15, 

to   Apr. 

1 

South  Carolina      "             " 

Sept. 

1, 

to    Mar. 

1 

South  Dakota       "             " 

Sept. 

10, 

to    Apr. 

10 

Tennessee               "             " 

Aug. 

1, 

to   Apr. 

15 

Virginia 

Aug. 

1, 

to   Jan. 

1 

Wisconsin 

Sept. 

1, 

to   Jan. 

1 

The  above  are  the  states  that  really  possess  the  wood-duck  and  that 
should  give  it,  one  and  all,  a  series  of  five-year  close  seasons.  Now,  is 
not  the  record  something  to  blush  for  ? 

Is  there  in  those  fifteen  states  nothing  too  beautiful  or  too  good  to  go 
into  the  pot  ? 


30  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

The  Woodcock  {Philohela  minor),  is  a  bird  regarding  which  my 
bird-hunting  friends  and  I  do  not  agree.  I  say  that  as  a  species  it  is 
steadily  disappearing,  and  presently  will  become  extinct,  unless  it  is 
accorded  better  protection.  They  reply:  "Well,  I  can  show  you  where 
there  are  woodcock  yet!" 

A  few  months  ago  a  Nova  Scotian  writer  in  Forest  and  Stream  came 
out  with  the  bold  prediction  that  three  more  years  of  the  usual  annual 
slaughter  of  woodcock  will  bring  the  species  to  the  verge  of  extinction 
in  that  Province. 

It  is  such  occurrences  as  this  that  bring  the  end  of  a  species : 
"Last  fall  [1911,  at  Norwalk,  Conn.]  we  had  a  good  flight  of  wood- 
cock, and  it  is  a  shame  the  way  they  were  slaughtered.  I  know  of  a 
number  of  cases  where  twenty  were  killed  by  one  gun  in  the  day,  and 
heard  of  one  case  of  fifty.  This  is  all  wrong,  and  means  the  end  of  the 
woodcock,  if  continued.  There  is  no  doubt  we  need  a  bag  limit  on  wood- 
cock, as  much  as  on  quail  or  partridge."  ("Woodcock"  in  Forest  and 
Stream,  Mar.  2,  1912.) 

As  far  back  as  1901,  Dr.  A.  K.  Fisher  of  the  Biological  Survey  pre- 
dicted that  the  woodcock  and  wood-duck  would  both  become  extinct 
unless  better  protected.  As  yet,  the  better  protection  demanded  has 
not  materialized  to  any  great  extent. 

Says  Mr.  Forbush,  State  Ornithologist  of  Massachusetts,  in  his 
admirable  "Special  Report,"  p.  45: 

"The  woodcock  is  decreasing  all  over  its  range  in  the  East,  and  needs 
the  strongest  protection.  Of  thirty-eight  Massachusetts  reports,  thirty- 
six  state  that  "woodcock  are  decreasing,"  "rare"  or  "extinct,"  while 
one  states  that  they  are  holding  their  own,  and  one  that  they  are  increas- 
ing slightly  since  the  law  was  passed  prohibiting  their  sale." 

Let  not  any  honest  American  or  Canadian,  sportsman  lullaby  him- 
self into  the  belief  that  the  woodcock  is  safe  from  extermination.  As 
sure  as  the  world,  it  is  going!  The  fact  that  a  little  pocket  here  or  there 
contains  a  few  birds  does  not  in  the  slightest  degree  disprove  the  main 
fact.  If  the  sportsmen  of  this  country  desire  to  save  the  seed  stock  of 
woodcock,  they  must  give  it  everywhere  five  or  ten-year  close  seasons, 
and  do  it  immediately! 

Our  Shore  Birds  in  General. — This  group  of  game  birds  will  be 
the  first  to  be  exterminated  in  North  America  as  a  group.  Of  all  our 
birds,  these  are  the  most  illy  fitted  to  survive.  They  are  very  con- 
spicuous, very  unwary,  easy  to  find  if  alive,  and  easy  to  shoot.  Never  in 
my  life  have  any  shore  birds  except  woodcock  and  snipe  appealed  to  me 
as  real  game.  They  are  too  easy  to  kill,  too  trivial  when  killed,  and  some 
of  them  are  too  rank  and  fishy  on  the  plate.  As  game  for  men  I  place  them 
on  a  level  with  barnyard  ducks  or  orchard  turkeys.  I  would  as  soon  be 
caught  stealing  a  sheep  as  to  be  seen  trying  to  shoot  fishy  yellow  legs  or 
little  joke  sandpipers  for  the  purpose  of  feeding  upon  them.  And  yet, 
thousands  of  full-grown  men,  some  of  them  six  feet  high,  grow  indignant 


CANDIDATES  FOR  OBLIVION  31 

and  turn  red  in  the  face  at  the  mention  of  a  law  to  give  all  the  shore- 
birds  of  New  York  a  five-year  close  season. 

But  for  all  that,  gentlemen  of  the  gun,  there  are  exactly  two  alterna- 
tives between  which  you  shall  choose : 

(1)  Either  give  the  woodcock  of  the  eastern  United  States  just  ten 
times  the  protection  that  it  now  has,  or  (2)  bid  the  species  a  long  farewell. 
If  you  elect  to  slaughter  old  Philohela  minor  on  the  altar  of  Selfishness, 
then  it  will  be  in  order  for  the  millions  of  people  who  do  not  kill  birds 
to  say  whether  that  proposal  shall  be  consummated  or  not. 

Read  if  you  please  Mr.  W.  A.  McAtee's  convincing  pamphlet  (Biolog- 
ical Survey,  No.  79),  on  "Our  Vanishing  Shore  Birds,"  reproduced  in  full  in 
Chapter  XXIII.  He  says :  "  Throughout  the  eastern  United  States,  shore 
birds  are  fast  vanishing.  Many  of  them  have  been  so  reduced  that 
extermination  seems  imminent.  So  averse  to  shore  birds  are  present  con- 
ditions [of  slaughter]  that  the  wonder  is  that  any  escape.  All  the  shore 
birds  of  the  United  States  are  in  great  need  of  better  protection.  .  .  Shore 
birds  have  been  hunted  until  only  a  remnant  of  their  once  vast  numbers 
are  left.  Their  limited  powers  of  reproduction,  coupled  with  the  natural 
vicissitudes  of  the  breeding  period,  make  their  increase  slow,  and  pecu- 
liarly expose  them  to  danger  of  extermination.  So  great  is  their  econom- 
ic value  that  their  retention  in  the  game  list  and  their  destruction  by 
sportsmen  is  a  serious  loss  to  agriculture." 

And  yet,  here  in  New  York  state  there  are  many  men  who  think  they 
"know,"  who  indignantly  scoff  at  the  idea  that  our  shore  birds  need  a 
five-year  close  season  to  help  save  them  from  annihilation.  The  writer's, 
appeal  for  this  at  a  recent  convention  of  the  New  York  State  Fish, 
Game  and  Forest  League  fell  upon  deaf  ears,  and  was  not  even 
seriously  discussed. 

The  shore-birds  must  be  saved ;  and  just  at  present  it  seems  that  the 
only  persons  who  will  do  it  are  those  who  are  not  sportsmen,  and  who 
never  kill  game !  If  the  sportsmen  persist  in  refusing  to  act,  to  them  we 
must  appeal. 

Besides  the  woodcock  and  snipe,  the  species  that  are  most  seriously 
threatened  with  extinction  at  an  early  date  are  the  following : 

Species  in  Great  Danger 

Willet Catoptrophorus  semipalmatus 

Dowitcher Macrorhamphus  griseus 

Knot :  Red-Breasted  Sandpiper Tryngites  snbruficollis 

Upland  Plover Bartramia  longicauda 

Golden  Plover Charadrius  dominicus 

Pectoral  Sandpiper Pisohia  maculata 

Of  these  fine  species,  Mr.  Forbush,  whose  excellent  knowledge  of  the 
shore  birds  of  the  Atlantic  coast  is  well  worth  the  most  serious  consider- 
ation, says  that  the  upland  plover,  or  Bartramian  sandpiper,  "is  in  immi- 


32 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


THE  GRAY  SQUIRREL.  A  FAMILIAR  FRIEND  WHEN  PROTECTED 


nent  danger  of  extinction.  Five  reports  from  localities  where  this  bird 
formerly  bred  give  it  as  nearing  extinction,  and  four  as  extinct.  This  is 
one  of  the  most  useful  of  all  birds  in  grass  land,  feeding  largely  on  grass- 
hoppers and  cutworms.  .  .  .  There  is  no  difference  of  opinion  in  re- 
gard to  the  diminution  of  the  shore  birds;  the  reports  from  all  quarters 
are  the  same.  It  is  noteworthy  that  practically  all  observers  agree  that, 
considering  all  species,  these  birds  have  fallen  oft"  about  75  per  cent 
within  twenty-five  to  forty  years,  and  that  several  species  are  nearly 
extirpated." 

In  1897  when  the  Zoological  Society  published  my  report  on  the 
"Extermination  of  Our  Birds  and  Mammals,"  we  put  down  the  decrease 
in  the  volume  of  bird  life  in  Massachusetts  during  the  previous  fifteen 
years  at  twenty-seven  per  cent.  The  later  and  more  elaborate  investi- 
gations of  Mr.  Forbush  have  satisfactorily  vindicated  the  accuracy  of 
that  estimate. 

There  are  other  North  American  birds  that  easily  might  be  added 
to  the  list  of  those  now  on  the  road  to  oblivion ;  but  surely  the  foregoing 
citations  are  sufficient  to  reveal  the  present  desperate  conditions  of  our 
bird  life  in  general.  Now  the  question  is:  What  are  the  great  American 
people  going  to  do  about  it  ? 

The  Gray  Squirrel. — The  gray  squirrel  is  in  danger  of  extermina- 
tion. Although  it  is  our  m.ost  beautiful  and  companionable  small  wild 
anim.al,  and  re£-lly  unfit  for  food,  Am.ericans  have  strangely  elected  to 


CANDIDATES  FOR  OBLIVION  33 

■class  it  as  "game,"  and  shoot  it  to  death,  to  eat!  And  this  in  stall-fed 
America,  in  the  twentieth  century !  Americans  arc  the  only  white  people 
in  the  world  who  eat  squirrels.  It  would  be  just  as  reasonable,  and  no 
more  barbarous,  to  kill  domestic  cats  and  eat  them.  Their  flesh  would 
taste  quite  as  good  as  squirrel  flesh  and  some  of  them  would  afford  quite 
as  good  "sport." 

Every  intelligent  person  knows  that  in  the  United  wStates  the  deadly 
shot-gun  is  rapidly  exterminating  every  bird  and  every  small  mammal 
that  is  classed  as  "game,"  and  which  legally  may  be  killed,  even  during 
two  months  of  the  twelve.  The  market  gunners  slaughter  ducks,  grouse, 
shore  birds  and  rabbits  as  if  we  were  all  starving. 

The  beautiful  gray  squirrel  has  clung  to  life  in  a  few  of  our  forests 
.and  wood-lots,  long  after  most  other  wild  mammals  have  disappeared; 
but  throughout  at  least  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  its  original  area,  it  is  now 
extinct.  During  the  past  thirty  years  I  have  roamed  the  woods  of  my 
state  in  several  widely  separated  localities,— the  Adirondacks,  Catskills, 
Berkshires,  western  New  York  and  elsewhere,  and  in  all  that  time  I 
have  seen  only  three  wild  gray  squirrels  outside  of  city  parks. 

Except  over  a  very  small  total  area,  the  gray  squirrel  is  already  gone 
from  the  wild  fauna  of  New  York  State ! 

Do  the  well-fed  people  of  America  wish  to  have  this  beautiful  animal 
entirely  exterminated  ?  Do  they  wish  the  woods  to  become  wholly  life- 
less? Or,  do  they  desire  to  bring  back  some  of  the  wild  creatures,  and 
keep  them  for  their  children  to  enjoy? 

There  is  no  wild  mammal  that  responds  to  protection  more  quickly 
than  the  gray  squirrel.  In  two  years'  time,  wild  specimens  that  are  set 
free  in  city  parks  learn  that  they  are  safe  from  harm  and  become  almost 
fearless.  They  take  food  from  the  hands  of  visitors,  and  climb  into  their 
arms.  One  of  the  most  pleasing  sights  of  the  Zoological  Park  is  the 
enjoyment  of  visitors,  young  and  old,  in  "petting  "  our  wild  gray  squirrels. 

We  ask  the  Boy  Scouts  of  America  to  bring  back  this  animal  to  each 
state  where  it  belongs,  by  securing  for  it  from  legislatures  and  governors 
the  perpetual  closed  seasons  that  it  imperatively  needs.  It  is  not  much 
to  ask.  This  can  be  done  by  writing  to  members  of  the  legislatures  and 
requesting  a  suitable  law.  Such  a  request  will  be  both  right  and  reason- 
able; and  three  states  have  already  granted  it. 

The  gray  squirrel  is  naturally  the  children's  closest  wild-animal  friend. 
Surely  every  farmer  boy  would  like  to  have  colonies  of  gray  squirrels 
around  him,  to  keep  him  company,  and  furnish  him  with  entertainment. 
A  wood-lot  without  squirrels  and  chipmunks  is  indeed  a  lifeless  place. 
For  $20  anyone  can  restock  any  bit  of  woods  with  the  most  compan- 
ionable and  most  beautiful  tree-dweller  that  nature  has  given  us. 

The  question  now  is,  which  will  you  choose — a  gray  squirrel  colony  to 
every  farm,  or  lifeless  desolation  ? 

We  ask  every  American  to  lend  a  hand  to  save  Silver- Tail. 


CHAPTER  IV 
EXTINCT  AND  NEARLY  EXTINCT   SPECIES   OF  MAMMALS 

When  we  pause  and  consider  the  years,  the  generations  and  the  ages 
that  Nature  spends  in  the  production  of  a  high  vertebrate  species,  the 
preservation  of  such  species  from  extermination  should  seriously  concern 
us.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  modern  man's  wild  chase  after  wealth  and 
pleasure,  it  is  only  one  person  out  of  every  ten  thousand  who  pauses  to 
regard  such  causes,  unless  cornered  by  some  protectionist  fanatic,  held 
fast  and  coerced  to  listen. 

We  are  not  discussing  the  animals  of  the  Pleistocene,  or  the  Eocene, 
or  any  period  of  the  far-distant  Past.  We  are  dealing  with  species  that 
have  been  ruthlessly,  needlessly  and  wickedly  destroyed  by  man  during 
our  own  times;  species  that,  had  they  been  given  a  fair  chance,  would  be 
alive  and  well  to-day. 

In  reckless  waste  of  blood  and  treasure,  the  nineteenth  century  has 
much  for  which  to  answer.  Wars  and  pillage,  fires,  earthquakes  and  vol- 
canoes are  unhappily  unavoidable.  Like  the  poor  of  holy  writ,  we  have 
them  with  us  always.  But  the  destruction  of  animal  life  is  ih  a  totally 
different  category  from  the  accidental  calamities  of  life.  It  is  deliberate, 
cold-blooded,  persistent,  and  in  its  final  stage,  criminal!  Worst  of  all, 
there  is  no  limit  to  the  devilish  persistence  of  the  confirmed  destroyer, 
this  side  of  the  total  extinction  of  species.  No  polar  night  is  too  cold,  no 
desert  inferno  is  too  hot  for  the  man  who  pursues  wild  life  for  commercial 
purposes.  The  rhytina  has  been  exterminated  in  the  far  north,  the  ele- 
phant seals  on  Kerguelen  are  being  exterminated  in  the  far  south,  and 
midway,  in  the  desert  mountains  of  Lower  California  a  fine  species  of 
mountain  sheep  is  rapidly  being  shot  into  oblivion. 

Large  Mammals  Completely  Exterminated 

The  Arizona  Elk,  (Cervus  merriami).  —  Right  at  our  very  door, 
under  our  very  noses  and  as  it  were  only  yesterday,  a  well-defined  species 
of  American  elk  has  been  totally  exterminated.  Until  recently  the  moun- 
tairs  of  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  were  inhabited  by  a  light-colored  elk  of 
smaller  size  than  the  Wyoming  species,  whose  antlers  possessed  on  each 
side  only  one  brow  tine  instead  of  two.  The  exact  history  of  the  blotting 
out  of  that  species  has  not  yet  been  written,  but  it  seems  that  its  final 
extinction  occurred  about  1901.  Its  extermination  was  only  a  routine 
incident  of  the  devilish  general  slaughter  of  American  big  game  that  by 
1900  had  wiped  out  nearly  everything  killable  over  a  large  portion  of  the 
Rocky  Mountain  region  and  the  Great  Plains. 


EXTINCT  AND    NEARLY  EXTINCT   SPECIES  35 

The  Arizona  elk  was  exterminated  before  the  separate  standing  of 
the  species  had  been  discovered  by  natiiralists,  and  before  even  one  skin 
had  been  preserved  in  a  museum!  In  1902  Mr.  E.  W.  Nelson  described 
the  species  from  two  male  skulls, — all  the  material  of  which  he  knew. 
Since  that  time,  a  third  male  skull,  bearing  an  excellent  pair  of  antlers, 
has  been  discovered  by  Mr.  Ferdinand  Kaegebehn,  a  member  of  the  New 
York  Zoological  Society,  and  presented  to  our  National  Collection  of 
Heads  and  Horns.  It  came  from  the  Santa  Catalina  Mountains,  Arizona, 
in  1884.  The  species  was  first  exterminated  in  the  central  and  northern 
mountains  of  Arizona,  probably  twenty  years  ago,  and  made  its  last 
stand  in  northwestern  New  Mexico.  Precisely  when  it  became  extinct 
there,  its  last  abiding  place,  we  do  not  know,  but  in  time  the  facts  may 
appear. 

The  Quagga,  (Equus  quagga). — Before  the  days  of  Livingstone, 
Gordon-Cumming  and  Anderson,  the  grassy  plains  and  half-forested  hills 
of  South  Africa  were  inhabited  by  great  herds  of  a  wild  equine  species 
that  in  its  markings  was  a  sort  of  connecting  link  between  the  striped 
zebras  and  the  stripeless  wild  asses.  The  quagga  resembled  a  wild  ass 
with  a  few  zebra  stripes  around  its  neck,  and  no  stripes  elsewhere. 

There  is  no  good  reason  why  a  mammal  that  is  not  in  any  one  of  the 
families  regularly  eaten  by  man  should  be  classed  as  a  game  animal. 
White  men,  outside  of  the  western  border  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  do 
not  eat  horses ;  and  by  this  token  there  is  no  reason  why  a  zebra  should 
be  shot  as  a  "  game  "  animal,  any  more  than  a  baboon.  A  big  male  baboon 
is  dangerous;   a  male  zebra  is  not. 

Nevertheless,  white  men  have  elected  to  shoot  zebras  as  game;  and 
under  this  curse  the  unfortunate  quagga  fell  to  rise  no  more.  The  species 
was  shot  to  a  speedy  death  by  sportsmen,  and  by  the  British  and  Dutch 
farmers  of  South  Africa.  It  became  extinct  about  1875,  and  to-da}^  there 
are  only  18  specimens  in  all  the  museums  of  the  world. 

The  Blaubok,  (Hippotragus  leucophaeus) . — The  first  of  the  Afri- 
can antelopes  to  become  extinct  in  modern  times  was  a  species  of  laro-e 
size,  closely  related  to  the  roan  antelope  of  to-day,  and  named  by  the 
early  Dutch  settlers  of  Cape  Colony  the  blaubok,  which  means  "blue- 
buck."  It  was  snufifed  out  of  existence  in  the  year  1800,  so  quickly  and 
so  thoroughly  that,  like  the  Arizona  elk,  it  very  nearly  escaped  the 
annals  of  natural  history.  According  to  the  careful  investigations  of  Mr. 
Graham  Renshaw,  there  are  only  eight  specimens  in  existence  in  all  the 
museums  of  Europe.  In  general  terms  it  may  be  stated  that  this  species 
has  been  extinct  for  about  a  century. 

David's  Deer,  (Elaphurus  davidianus). — We  enter  this  species  with 
those  that  are  totally  extinct,  because  this  is  true  of  it  so  far  as  its  wild 
state  is  concerned.  It  is  a  deer  nearly  as  large  as  the  red  deer  of  Europe, 
with  3-tined  antlers  about  equal  in  total  length  to  those  of  the  red  deer. 
Its  most  striking  differential  character  is  its  long  tail,  a  feature  that 
among  the  deer  of  the  world  is  quite  unique. 


36  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


SKELETON  OF  A  RHYTINA,  OR  ARCTIC  SEA-COW 
In  the  United  States  National  Museum 

Originally  this  species  inhabited  "northern  Mongolia"  (China),  but 
in  a  wild  state  it  became  extinct  before  its  zoological  standing  became 
known  to  the  scientific  world.  The  species  was  called  to  the  attention  of 
zoologists  by  a  Roman  Catholic  missionary,  called  Father  David,  and 
when  finally  described  it  was  named  in  his  honor. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Boxer  Rebellion,  in  1900,  there  were  about  200 
specimens  living  in  the  imperial  park  of  China,  a  short  distance  south  of 
Pekin;  but  during  the  rebellion,  all  of  them  were  killed  and  eaten,  thus 
totally  exterminating  the  species  from  Asia. 

Fortunately,  previous  to  that  calamity  (in  1894),  the  Duke  of  Bed- 
ford had  by  considerable  effort  and  expenditure  procured  and  established 
in  his  matchless  park  surrounding  Woburn  Abbey,  England,  a  herd  of 
eighteen  specim.ens  of  this  rarest  of  all  deer.  That  nucleus  has  thriven 
and  increased,  until  in  1910  it  contained  thirty-four  head.  Owing  to  the 
fact  that  all  the  living  female  specimens  of  this  remarkable  species  are 
concentrated  in  one  spot,  and  perfectly  liable  to  be  wiped  out  in  one  year 
by  riot,  war  or  disease,  there  is  some  cause  for  anxiety.  The  writer  has 
gone  so  far  as  to  suggest  the  desirability  of  starting  a  new  herd  of  David's 
deer,  at  some  point  far  distant  from  England,  as  an  insurance  measure 
against  the  possibility  of  calamity  at  Woburn.  Excepting  two  or  three 
specimens  in  European  zoological  gardens  that  have  been  favored  by  the 
Duke  of  Bedford,  there  are  no  living  specimens  outside  of  Woburn  Park. 

The  Rhytina,  (Rhytina  gigas). — The  most  northerly  Sirenian  that 
(so  far  as  we  know)  ever  inhabited  the  earth,  lived  on  the  Commander 
Islands  m  the  northern  end  of  Behring  Sea,  and  was  exterminated  by  man, 
for  its  oil  and  its  flesh,  about  1768.  It  was  first  made  known  to  the  world 
by  Stcller,  in  1741,  and  must  have  become  extinct  near  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

The  rhytina  belonged  to  the  same  mammalian  Order  as  the  manatee  of 
Florida  and  South  America,  and  the  dugong  of  Australia.  The  largest 
manatee  that  Florida  has  produced,  so  far  as  we  know,  was  thirteen  feet 
long.  The  rhytina  attained  a  length  of  between  thirty  and  thirty-five 
feet,  and  a  weight  of  6,000  pounds  or  over.  The  flesh  of  this  animal,  like^ 
that  of  the  manatee  and  dugong,  must  have  been  edible,  and  surely  was 
prized  by  the  hungry  sailors  and  natives  of  its  time.     It  is  not  strange 


EXTINCT  AND    NEARLY  EXTINCT  SPECIES 


■iT 


BURCHELL'S  ZEBRA,  IN  THE  U.  S.  NATIONAL  MUSEUM 
Now  Believed  to  be  Totally  Extinct 


'that  such  a  species  was  quickly  exterminated  by  man,  in  the  arctic  regions. 
The  wonder  is  that  it  ever  existed  at  a  latitude  so  outrageous  for  a  Siren- 
ian,  an  animal  which  by  all  precedents  should  prefer  life  in  temperate  or 
warm  waters. 

Burchell's  Zebra  (Equus  burchelli  typicus). — The  foundation  type- 
of  what  now  is  the  Burchell  group  of  zebras,  consisting  of  four  or  five  sub- 
species of  the  original  species  of  burchelli,  is  an  animal  abundantly  striped 
as  to  its  body,  neck  and  head,  but  with  legs  that  are  almost  white  and 
free  from  stripes.  The  sub-species  have  legs  that  are  striped  about  half 
as  much  as  the  mountain  zebra  and  the  Grevy  species. 

While  there  are  Chapman  zebras  and  Grant  zebras  in  plent}-,  and  of 
Crawshay's  not  a  few,  all  these  are  forms  that  have  developed  northward 
of  the  range  of  the  parent  species,  the  original  Eqtms  burchelli.  For  half 
a  century  in  South  Africa  the  latter  had  been  harried  and  driven  and  shot, 
and  now  it  is  gone,  forever.  Now,  the  museum  people  of  the  world  are 
hungrily  enumerating  their  mounted  specimens,  and  live  ones  cannot  be 
procured  with  money,  because  there  are  none !  Already  it  is  comn'.on  talk 
that  "the  true  Burchell  zebra  is  extinct;"  and  unfortunately  there  is  no 
good  reason  to  doubt  it.     Even  if  there  are  a  few  now  living  in  some 


38 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


THYLACINE  OR  TASMANIAN  WOLF 
N  ow  Being  Exterminated  by  the  Sheep  Owners  of  Tasmania 

remote  nook  of  the  Transvaal,  or  Zululand,  or  Portuguese  East  Africa, 
the  chances  are  as  100  to  1  that  they  will  not  be  suffered  to  bring  back 
the  species;  and  so,  to  Burchell's  zebra,  the  world  is  to-day  saying 
"Farewell!" 


Species  of  Large  Mammals  Almost  Extinct 

The  Thylacine  or  Tasmanian  Wolf,  (Thylacinus  cynocephalus). — 
Four  years  ago,  when  Mr.  W.  H.  D.  Le  Souef,  Director  of  the  Melbourne 
Zoological  Garden  (Australia) ,  stood  before  the  cage  of  the  living  thylacine 
in  the  New  York  Zoological  Park,  he  first  expressed  surprise  at  the  sight 
of  the  animal,  then  said : 

"I  advise  you  to  take  excellent  care  of  that  specimen;  for  when  it 
is  gone,  you  never  will  get  another.    The  species  soon  will  be  extinct." 

This  opinion  has  been  supported,  quite  independently,  by  a  lady  who 
is  the  highest  authority  on  the  present  status  of  that  species,  Mrs.  Mary 
G.  Roberts,  of  Hobart,  Tasmania.  For  nearly  ten  years  Mrs.  Roberts 
has  been  proctiring  all  the  living  specimens  of  the  thylacine  that  money 
could  buy,  and  attempting  to  breed  them  at  her  private  zoo.  She  states 
that  the  mountain  home  of  this  animal  is  now  occupied  by  flocks  of  sheep, 
and  because  of  the  fact  that  the  ' '  Tasmanian  wolves ' '  raid  the  flocks  and 
kill  lambs,  the  sheep-owners  and  herders  are  systematically  poisoning 
the  thylacines  as  fast  as  possible.     Inasmuch  as  the  species  is  limited  to 


EXTINCT  AND  NEARLY  EXTINCT  SPECIES  39 


WEST   INDIAN  SEAL 
In  the  New  York  Aquarium 

Tasmania,  Mrs.  Roberts  and  others  fear  that  the  sheepmen  will  totally 
exterminate  the  remnant  at  an  early  date.  This  animal  is  the  largest  and 
also  the  most  interesting  carnivorous  marsupial  of  Australia,  and  its 
untimely  end  will  be  a  cause  for  sincere  regret. 

The  West  Indian  Seal,  (Monachus  tropicalis).- — For  at  least  fifty 
years,  all  the  zoologists  who  ever  had  heard  of  this  species  believed  that 
the  oil-hunters  had  completely  exterminated  it.  In  1885,  when  the 
National  Museum  came  into  possession  of  one  poorly-mounted  skin, 
from  Professor  Poey,  of  Havana,  it  was  regarded  as  a  great  prize. 

Most  unexpectedly,  in  1S86  American  zoologists  were  startled  by  the 
discovery  of  a  small  herd  on  the  Triangle  Islands,  in  the  Caribbean  Sea, 
near  Yucatan,  by  Mr.  Henry  L.  Ward,  now  director  of  the  Milwaukee 
Public  Museum,  and  Professor  Ferrari,  of  the  National  Museum  of 
Mexico.  They  found  about  twenty  specimens,  and  collected  only  a 
sufficient  number  to  establish  the  true  character  of  the  species. 

Since  that  time,  four  living  specimens  have  been  captured,  and  sent 
to  the  New  York  Aquarium,  where  they  lived  for  satisfactory  periods. 
The  indoor  life  and  atmosphere  did  not  seem  to  injure  the  natural  vitality 
of  the  animals.  In  fact,  I  think  they  were  far  more  lively  in  the  Aquari- 
um than  were  the  sluggish  creatures  that  Mr.  Ward  saw  on  the  Triangle 
reefs,  and  described  in  his  report  of  the  expedition. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  there  are  yet  alive  a  few  specimens  of  this  odd 
species;  but  the  Damocletian  sword  of  destruction  hangs  over  them 
suspended  by  a  fine  hair,  and  it  is  to  be  expected  that  in  the  future  some 


40 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


CALIFORNIA  ELEPHANT  SEAL 
Photographed  on  Guadalupe  Island  by  C   H.  Townsend. 

roving  sea  adventurer  will  pounce  upon  the  Remnant,  and  wipe  it  out  of 
existence  for  whatever  reason  may  to  him  seem  good. 

The  California  Elephant  Seal,  (Mirounga  angustirostris) . — 
This  remarkable  long-snouted  species  of  seal  was  reluctantly  stricken 
from  the  fauna  of  the  United  States  several  years  ago,  and  for  at  least 
fifteen  years  it  has  been  regarded  as  totally  extinct.  Last  year,  however 
(1911),  the  Albatross  scientific  expedition,  under  the  control  of  Director 
C.  H.  Townsend  of  the  New  York  Aquarium,  visited  Guadalupe 
Island,  175  miles  oif  the  Pacific  coast  of  Lower  California  and  there 
found  about  150  living  elephant  seals.  They  took  six  living  specimens, 
all  of  which  died  after  a  few  months  in  captivity.  Ever  since  that  time, 
first  one  person  and  then  another  comes  to  the  front  with  a  cheerful 
proposition  to  go  to  those  islands  and  "clean  up"  all  the  remainder  of 
those  wonderful  seals.  One  hunting  party  could  land  on  Guadalupe, 
and  in  one  week  totally  destroy  the  last  remnant  of  this  almost  extinct 
species.     To-day  the  only  question  is,  Who  will  be  mean  enough  to  do  it? 

Fortunately,  those  seals  have  no  commercial  value  whatsoever.  The 
little  oil  they  would  yield  would  not  pay  the  wages  of  cook's  mate.  The 
proven  impossibility  of  keeping  specimens  alive  in  captivity,  even  for 
one  year,  and  the  absence  of  cash  value  in  the  skins,  even  for  museum 
purposes,  has  left  nothing  of  value  in  the  animals  to  justify  an  expedition 
to  kill  or  to  capture  them.  No  zoological  garden  or  park  desires  any  of 
them,  at  any  price.  Adult  males  attain  a  length  of  sixteen  feet,  and 
females  eleven  feet.  Formerly  this  species  was  abundant-in  San  Christo- 
bal  Bay,  Lower  California. 


EXTINCT  AND  NEARLY  EXTINCT  SPECIES  41 

At  present,  Mexico  is  in  no  frame  of  mind  to  provide  real  protection 
to  a  small  colony  of  seals  of  no  commercial  value,  175  miles  from  her 
mainland,  on  an  uninhabited  island.  It  is  wildly  improbable  that  those 
seals  will  be  permitted  to  live.  It  is  a  safe  prediction  that  our  next 
news  of  the  elephant  seals  of  Guadalupe  will  tell  of  the  total  extinction 
of  those  last  140  survivors  of  the  species. 

The  California  Grizzly  Bear,  (Ursus  horrihilis  calif ornicus). — Na 
one  protects  grizzly  bears,  except  in  the  Yellowstone  Park  and  other 
game  preserves.  For  obvious  reasons,  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  any 
individuals  of  this  huge  species  now  remain  alive,  or  how  long  it  will  be 
until  the  last  one  falls  before  a  .405  Winchester  engine  of  extermination. 
We  know  that  a  living  specimen  can  not  be  procured  with  money,  and 
we  believe  that  "  Old  Monarch  "  now  in  Golden  Gate  Park,  San  Francisco, 
is  the  last  specimen  of  his  species  that  ever  will  be  exhibited  alive. 

I  can  think  of  no  reason,  save  general  Calif ornian  apathy,  why  the 
extinction  of  this  huge  and  remarkable  animal  w^as  not  prevented  by 
law.  The  sunset  grizzly  (on  a  railroad  track)  is  the  advertising  em- 
blem of  the  Golden  State,  and  surely  the  state  should  take  sufficient 
interest  in  the  species  to  prevent  its  total  extermination. 

But  it  will  not.  California  is  hell-bent  on  exterminating  a  long  list 
of  her  wild-life  species,  and  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  masses  can  be 
reached  and  aroused  in  time  to  stop  it.  Name  some  of  the  species? 
Certainly;  with  all  the  pleasure  in  life:  The  band-tailed  pigeon,  the 
white-tailed  kite,  the  sharp-tailed  grouse,  the  sage  grouse,  the  mountain 
sheep,  prong-horned  antelope  California  mule  deer,  and  ducks  and  geese 
too  numerous  to  mention. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  EXTERMINATION   OF   SPECIES,  STATE  BY  STATE 

Early  in  1912  I  addressed  to  about  250  persons  throughout  the  United 
States,  three  questions,  as  follows: 

1.  What  species  of  birds  have  become  totally  extinct  in  your  state? 

2.  What  species  of  birds  and  mammals  are  threatened  with  early  extinction? 

3.  What  species  of  mammals  have  been  exterminated  throughout  your  state? 

These  queries  were  addressed  to  persons  whose  tastes  and  observa- 
tions rendered  them  especially  qualified  to  furnish  the  information  de- 
sired. The  interest  shown  in  the  inquiry  was  highly  gratifying.  The 
best  of  the  information  given  is  summarized  below;  but  this  tabulation 
also  includes  much  information  acquired  from  other  sources.  The  gen- 
eral summary  of  the  subject  will,  I  am  sure,  convince  all  thoughtful  per- 
sons that  the  present  condition  of  the  best  wild  life  of  the  nation  is  in- 
deed very  grave.  This  list  is  not  submitted  as  representing  prolonged 
research  or  absolute  perfection,  but  it  is  sufficient  to  point  forty-eight 
morals. 

Birds  and  Mammals  That  Have  Been  Totally  Exterminated  in 
Various  States  and  Provinces 

Alabama: 

Passenger  pigeon,  Carolina  parrakeet;   puma,  elk,  gray  wolf,  beaver. 
Arizona: 

Ridgway's  quail  {Colinus  ridgwayi);  Arizona  elk  {Cervus  merriami),  bison. 

Arkansas: 

Passenger  pigeon,  Carolina  parrakeet,  whooping  crane;  bison,  elk,  beaver. 

California: 

No  birds  totally  extinct,  but  several  nearly  so;   grizzly  bear  (?),  elephant  seal. 
Colorado: 

Carolina  parrakeet,  whooping  crane;   bison. 
Connecticut: 

Passenger  pigeon,  Eskimo  curlew,  great  auk,  Labrador  duck,  upland  plover,  heath 
hen,  wild  turkey;    puma,  gray  wolf,  Canada  lynx,  black  bear,  elk. 

Delaware: 

Wild  turkey,  ruffed  grouse,  passenger  pigeon,  heath  hen,  dickcissel,  whooping  crane, 
Carolina  parrakeet;  white-tailed  deer,  black  bear,  gray  wolf,  beaver,  Canada  lynx, 
puma. 


EXTERMINATION  STATE  BY   STATE  43 

Florida: 

Flamingo,   roseate  spoonbill,   scarlet  ibis,   Carolina  parrakeet,   passenger  pigeon. 

Georgia: 

Passenger  pigeon,  Carolina  parrakeet,  whooping  crane,  trumpeter  swan;  bison,  elk, 
beaver,  gray  wolf,  puma. — (Last  3,  Craig  D.  Arnold.) 

Idaho: 

Wood  duck,  long-billed  curlew,  whooping  crane;  bison. — (Dr.  C.  S.  Moody.) 

Illinois: 

Passenger  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  Carolina  parrakeet,  trumpeter  swan,  snowy 
egret,  Eskimo  curlew;   bison,  elk,  white-tailed  deer,  black  bear,  puma,  Canada  lynx. 

Indiana: 

Passenger  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  northern  raven,  wild  turkey,  ivory-billed  wood- 
pecker, Carolina  parrakeet,  trumpeter  swan,  snowy  egret,  Eskimo  curlew;  bison,  elk, 
white-tailed  deer,  black  bear,  Canada  lynx,  beaver,  porcupine. — (Amos  W.   Butler) 

Iowa: 

Wild  turkey,  Eskimo  curlew,  whooping  crane,  trumpeter  swan,  white  pelican,  pas- 
senger pigeon;  bison,  elk,  antelope,  white-tailed  deer,  black  bear,  puma,  Canada  lynx, 
gray  wolf,  beaver,  porcupine.  • 

Kansas: 

American  scaup  duck,  woodcock,  ruffed  grouse,  wild  turkey,  pileated  woodpecker, 
parrakeet,  white-necked  raven,  American  raven  (all  Prof.  L.  L.  Dyche);  golden 
plover,  Eskimo  curlew,  Hudsonian  curlew,  wood-duck  (C.  H.  Smyth  and  James 
Howard,  Wichita).  Bison,  elk,  mule  deer,  white-tailed  deer,  grav  wolf,  beaver  (?), 
otter,  lynx  (?)     (L.  L.  D.) 

("Reports  as  complete  and  thorough  as  these  for  other  localities  no  doubt  would 
show  lists  equally  long  for  several  other  states. — -(W.  T.  H.) 

Kentucky: 

Passenger  pigeon,  parrakeet;    bison,  elk,  puma,  beaver,  gray  wolf. 

Louisiana: 

Passenger  pigeon,  Carolina  parrakeet,  Eskimo  curlew,  flamingo,  scarlet  ibis,  roseate 
spoonbill;   bison,  ocelot. 

Maine: 

Great  auk,  Labrador  duck,  Eskimo  curlew,  oystercatcher,  wild  turkey,  heath  hen, 
passenger  pigeon;  puma,  gray  wolf,  wolverine,  caribou.  — (All  Arthur  H.  Norton, 
Portland.) 

Maryland: 

Sandhill  crane,  parrakeet,  passenger  pigeon;  bison,  elk,  beaver,  gray  wolf,  puma, 
porcupine. 

Massachusetts: 

Wild  turkey,  passenger  pigeon,  Labrador  duck,  whooping  crane,  sandhill  crane, 
black-throated  bunting,  great  auk,  Eskimo  curlew.  —  (William  Brewster,  W.  P. 
Wharton) ;   Canada  lynx,  gray  wolf,  black  bear,  moose,  elk. 

Michigan: 

Passenger  pigeon,  wild  turkey,  sandhill  crane,  whooping  crane,  bison,  elk,  wolverine. 

Minnesota: 

Whooping  crane,  white  pelican,  trumpeter  swan,  passenger  pigeon,  bison,  elk,  mule 
deer,  antelope. 

A  strange  condition  exists  in  Minnesota,  as  will  be  seen  by  reference  to  the  next  list 
of  states.  A  great  many  species  are  on  the  road  to  speedy  extermination;  but  as  yet 
the  number  of  those  that  have  become  totally  extinct  up  to  date  is  small. 

Mississippi: 

Parrakeet,  passenger  pigeon;  bison.     (Data  incomplete.) 


44  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Missouri: 

Parrakeet,  ivory-billed  woodpecker,  passenger  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  pinnated 
grouse;  bison,  elk,  beaver. 

Montana: 

Although  many  Montana  birds  are  on  the  verge  of  extinction,  the  only  species  that 
we  are  sure  have  totally  vanished  are  the  passenger  pigeon  and  whooping  crane. 
Mammals  extinct,  bison. 

Nebraska: 

Curlew,  wild  turkey,  parrakeet,  passenger  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  and  no  doubt 
all  the  other  species  that  have  disappeared  from  Kansas.  Mammals:  bison,  antelope, 
elk,  and  mule  deer. 

Nevada: 

By  a  rather  odd  combination  of  causes  and  effects,  Nevada  retains  representatives 
of  nearly  all  her  original  outfit  of  bird  and  mammal  species  except  the  bison  and  elk; 
but  several  of  them  will  shortly  become  extinct. 

New  Hampshire: 

Wild  turkey,  heath  hen,  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  Eskimo  curlew,  upland  plover, 
Labrador  duck;  woodland  caribou,  moose. 

New  Jersey: 

Heath  hen,  wild  turkey,  pigeon,  parrakeet,  Eskimo  curlew,  Labrador  duck,  snowy 
egret,  whooping  crane,  sandhill  crane,  trumpeter  swan,  pileated  woodpecker;  gray 
wolf,  black  bear,  beaver,  elk.  porcupine,  puma. 

New  Mexico: 

Notwithstanding  an  enormous  decrease  in  the  general  volume  of  wild  life  in  New 
Mexico,  comparatively  few  species  have  been  totally  exterminated.  The  most  impor- 
tant are  the  bison  and  Arizona  elk. 

New  York: 

Heath  hen,  passenger  pigeon,  wild  turkey,  great  auk,  trumpeter  swan,  Labrador 
duck,  harlequin  duck,  Eskimo  curlew,  upland  plover,  golden  plover,  whooping  crane, 
sandhill  crane,  purple  martin,  pileated  woodpecker,  moose,  caribou,  bison,  elk,  puma, 
gray  wolf,  wolverine,  marten,  fisher,  beaver,  fox,  squirrel,  harbor  seal. 

North  Carolina: 

Ivory-billed  woodpecker,  parrakeet,  pigeon,  roseate  spoonbill,  long-billed  curlew 
{Niimenius  americaniis),  Eskimo  curlew;  bison,  elk,  gray  wolf,  puma,  beaver. — (E. 
L.  Ewbank,  T.  Gilbert  Pearson,  H.  H.  and  C.  S.  Brimley.) 

North  Dakota: 

Whooping  crane,  long-billed  curlew,  Hudsonian  godwit,  passenger  pigeon;  bison, 
elk,  mule  deer,  mountain  sheep. — (W.  B.  Bell  and  Alfred  Eastgate.) 

Ohio  : 

Pigeon,  wild  turkey,  pinnated  grouse,  northern  pileated  woodpecker,  parrakeet; 
white-tailed  deer,  bison,  elk,  black  bear,  puma,  gray  wolf,  beaver,  otter,  puma,  lynx. 

Oklahoma: 

Records  for  birds  insufficient.  Mammals:  bison,  elk,  antelope,  mule  deer,  puma, 
black  bear. 

Oregon: 

The  only  species  known  to  have  been  wnoily  exterminated  during  recent  times  is  the 
California  condor  and  the  bison,  both  of  which  were  rare  stragglers  into  Oregon ;  but 
a  number  of  species  are  now  close  to  extinction. 

Pennsylvania: 

Heath  hen,  pigeon,  parrakeet,  Labrador  duck;   bison,  elk,  moose,  puma,  gray  wolf, 


EXTERMINATION  STATE    BY   STATE  45 

Canada  Ij^nx,  wolverine,   beaver.  — (Witmer  Stone,  Dr.  C.  B.  Penrose  and  Arthur 

Chapman.) 

Rhode  Island: 

Heath  hen,  passenger  pigeon,  wild  turkey,  least  tern,  eastern  willet,  Eskimo  curlew, 
marbled  god  wit,  long-billed  curlew. — (Harry  S.  Hathaway);  puma,  black  bear,  gray 
wolf,  beaver,  otter,  wolverine. 

South  Carolina: 

Ivory-billed  woodpecker,  CaroHna  parrakeet;  bison,  elk,  puma,  gray  wolf. — (James 
H.  Rice,  Jr.) 

South  Dakota: 

Whooping  crane,  trumpeter  swan,  pigeon,  long-billed  curlew;  bison,  elk,  mule  deer, 
mountain  sheep. 

Tennessee: 

Records  insufficient. 

Texas: 

Wild  turkey,  passenger  pigeon,  ivory-billed  woodpecker,  flamingo,  roseate  spoon- 
bill, American  egret,  whooping  crane,  wood-duck;  bison,  elk,  mountain  sheep,  ante- 
lope, "a  small,  dark  deer  that  lived  40  years  ago."     (Capt.  M.  B.  Davis.) 

Utah: 

Records  insufficient. 

Vermont: 

Wild  turkey,  heath  hen,  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  Eskimo  curlew,  upland  plover, 
Labrador  duck;  caribou,  moose,  beaver,  white-tailed  deer  in  1875,  but  successfully 
reintroduced. 

Virginia: 

Records  insufficient. 

Washington: 

Very  few  species  have  become  totally  extinct,  but  a  number  are  on  the  verge,  and 
will  be  named  in  the  next  state  schedule. 

West  Virginia: 

Pigeon,  parrakeet;   bison,  elk,  beaver,  puma,  gray  wolf. 

Wisconsin: 

Whooping  crane,  passenger  pigeon,  American  egret,  wild  turkey,  Carolina  parra- 
keet; bison,  moose,  elk,  woodland  caribou,  puma,  wolverine. 

Wyoming: 

Whooping  crane,  trumpeter  swan,  wood-duck;   mountain  goat. 


CANADA 
Alberta: 

Passenger  pigeon,  whooping  crane;  bison. 

British  Columbia: 

A.  Bryan  Williams  reports:  "Do  not  know  of  an}'  birds  having  become  extinct." 

Manitoba: 

Pigeon;  bison,  antelope,  gray  wolf. 

New  Brunswick: 

Pigeon. 

Nova  Scotia: 

Labrador  duck,  Eskimo  curlew,  passenger  pigeon. 

Ontario: 

Wild  turkey,  pigeon,  Eskimo  curlew. 


46  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Prince  Edward  Island: 

(Reported  by  E.  T.  Carbonell):  Eskimo  curlew,  horned  grebe,  ring-billed  gull, 
Caspian  tern,  passenger  pigeon,  Wilson's  petrel,  wood-duck,  Barrow's  golden-eye, 
whistling  swan,  American  eider,  white-fronted  goose,  purple  sandpiper,  Canada 
grouse,  long-eared  owl,  screech  owl,  black-throated  bunting,  pine  warbler,  red-necked 
grebe,  purple  martin  and  catbird;  beaver,  black  fox,  silver  gray  fox,  marten  and 
black  bear. 

Quebec: 
Pigeon. 

Saskatchewan  : 
Pigeon;  bison. 

Birds  and  Mammals  Threatened  with  Extinction 

The  second  question  submitted  in  my  inquiry  produced  results  even 
more  startling  than  the  first.  None  of  the  persons  reporting  can  be 
regarded  as  alarmists,  but  some  of  the  lists  of  species  approaching 
extinction  are  appallingly  long.  To  their  observations  I  add  other  notes 
and  observations  of  interest  at  this  time. 

Alabama : 

Wood-duck,  snowy  egret,  woodcock.  "The  worst  enemy  of  wild  life  is  the  pot- 
hunter and  game  hog.  These  wholesale  slaughterers  of  game  resort  to  any  device 
and  practice,  it  matters  not  how  murderous,  to  accomplish  the  pernicious  ends  of 
their  nefarious  campaign  of  relentless  extermination  of  fur  and  feather.  They  cannot 
be  controlled  by  local  laws,  for  these  after  having  been  tried  for  several  generations 
have  proven  consummate  failures,  for  the  reason  that  local  authorities  will  not  enforce 
the  provisions  of  game  and  bird  protective  statutes.  Experience  has  demonstrated 
the  fact  that  no  one  desires  to  inform  voluntarily  on  his  neighbors ,  and  since  breaking 
the  game  law  is  not  construed  to  involve  moral  turpitude,  even  to  an  infinitesimal 
degree,  by  many  of  our  citizens,  the  plunderers  of  nature's  storehouse  thus  go  free, 
it  matters  not  how  great  the  damage  done  to  the  people  as  a  whole." — (John  H.  Wal- 
lace, Jr.,  Game  Commissioner  of  Alabama.) 

Alaska  : 

Thanks  to  geographic  and  climatic  conditions,  the  Alaskan  game  laws  and  $15,000 
with  which  to  enforce  them,  the  status  of  the  wild  life  of  Alaska  is  fairly  satisfactory. 
I  think  that  at  present  no  species  is  in  danger  of  extinction  in  the  near  future.  When 
it  was  pointed  out  to  Congress  in  1902,  by  Madison  Grant,  T.  S.  Palmer  and  others 
that  the  wild  life  of  Alaska  was  seriously  threatened.  Congress  immediately  enacted 
the  law  that  was  recommended,  and  now  appropriates  yearly  a  fair  sum  for  its  enforce- 
ment. I  regard  the  Alaskan  situation  as  being,  for  so  vast  and  difficult  a  region,  rea- 
sonably well  in  hand,  even  though  open  to  improvement. 

There  is  one  fatal  defect  in  our  Alaskan  game  law,  in  the  perpetual  and  sweeping 
license  to  kill,  that  is  bestowed  upon  "natives"  and  "prospectors."  Under  cover  of 
this  law,  the  Indians  can  slaughter  game  to  any  extent  they  choose;  and  they  are 
great  killers.  For  example:  In  1911  at  Sand  Point,  Kenai  Peninsula,  Frank  E.  Klein- 
schmidt  saw  82  caribou  tongues  in  the  boat  of  a  native,  that  had  been  brought  in  for 
sale  at  50  cents,  while  the  carcasses  were  left  where  they  fell,  to  poison  the  air  of 
Alaska.  Thanks  to  the  game  law,  and  five  wardens,  the  number  of  big  game  animals 
killed  last  year  in  Alaska  by  sportsmen  was  reasonably  small, — just  as  it  sh;uld 
have  been.— (W.  T.  H.) 

Arizona  : 

During  an  overland  trip  made  by  Dr.  MacDougal  and  others  in  1907  from  Tucson 
to  Sonoyta,  on  the  international  boundary,  150  miles  and  back  again,  we  saw  not  one 
antelope  or  deer. — (W.  T.  H.) 


EXTERMINA  TION  STATE  BY  STATE  47 

California  : 

Swan,  white  heron,  bronze  ibis.  CaUfornia  valley  quail  are  getting  very  scarce, 
and  unless  adequate  protection  is  afforded  them  shortly,  they  will  be  found  hereafter 
only  in  remote  districts.  Ducks  also  are  decreasing  rapidly.— (H.  W.  Keller,  Los 
Angeles.) 

Sage  grouse  and  Columbian  sharp-tailed  grouse  are  so  nearly  extinct  that  it  may 
practically  be  said  that  they  are  extinct.  Among  species  likely  to  be  exterminated  in 
the  near  future  are  the  wood-duck  and  band-tailed  pigeon. — ^(W.  P.  Taylor,  Berkeley.) 

Colorado: 

Sage  grouse  and  sharp-tailed  grouse;   nearly  all  the  shore  birds. 

Connecticut: 

All  the  shore  birds;  quail,  purple  martin. 

Delaware: 

Wood  duck,  upland  plover,  least  tern,  Wilson  tern,  roseate  tern,  black  skimmer, 
oystercatcher,  and  numerous  other  littoral  species.  Pileated  woodpeckers,  bald 
eagles  and  all  the  ducks  are  much  more  rare  than  formerly.  Swan  are  about  gone, 
geese  scarce.  The  list  of  ducks,  geese  and  shore-birds,  as  well  as  of  terns  and  gulls 
that  are  nearing  extinction  is  appalling. — (C.  J.  Pennock,  Wilmington.) 

Wood-duck,  woodcock,  turtle  dove  and  bob-white. — (A.  R.  Spaid,  Wilmington.) 

Florida: 

Limpkin,  ivory-billed  woodpecker,  wild  turkey  (?). 

Georgia: 

Ruffed  grouse,  wild  turkey. 

Idaho: 

Harlequin  duck,  mountain  plover,  dusky  grouse,  Columbian  sharp-tailed  grouse, 
sage  grouse.  Elk,  goats  and  grizzly  bears  are  becoming  very  scarce.  Of  the  smaller 
animals  I  have  not  seen  a  fisher  for  years,  and  marten  are  hardly  to  be  found.  The 
same  is  true  of  other  species. — (Dr.  Charles  S.  Moody,  Sand  Point.) 

Illinois: 

Pinnated  grouse,  except  where  rigidly  protected.  In  Vermillion  County,  by  long 
and  persistent  protection  Harvey  J.  Sconce  has  bred  back  upon  his  farm  about  400 
of  these  birds. 

Indiana: 

Pileated  woodpecker,  woodcock,  ruffed  grouse,  pigeon  hawk,  duck  hawk. — (Amos 
W.  Butler,  Indianapolis.) 

In  northern  and  northwestern  Indiana,  a  perpetual  close  season  and  rigid  protec- 
tion have  enabled  the  almost-extinct  pinnated  grouse  to  breed  up  to  a  total  number 
now  estimated  by  Game  Commissioner  Miles  and  his  wardens  at  10,000  birds.  This 
is  a  gratifying  illustration  of  what  can  be  done  in  bringing  back  an  almost-vanished 
species.  The  good  example  of  Indiana  should  be  followed  by  every  state  that  still 
possesses  a  remnant  of  prairie-chickens,  or  other  grouse. 

Iowa: 

Pinnated  grouse,  wood-duck.  Notwithstanding  an  invasion  of  Jasper  County, 
Iowa,  in  the  winter  of  1911-12  by  hundreds  of  pinnated  grouse,  such  as  had  not  been 
known  in  20  years,  this  gives  no  ground  to  hope  that  the  future  of  the  species  is  worth 
a  moment's  purchase.  The  winter  migration  came  from  the  Dakotas,  and  was  be- 
lieved to  be  due  to  the  extra  severe  winter,  and  the  scarcity  of  food.  Commenting  on 
this  unprecedented  occurrence,  J.  L.  Sloanaker  in  the  "Wilson  Bulletin"  No.  78,  says: 

"In  the  opinion  of  many,  the  formerly  abundant  prairie  chicken  is  doomed  to  early 
extinction.  Many  will  testify  to  their  abundance  in  those  years  [in  South  Dakota, 
1902]  when  the  great  land  movement  was  taking  place.    The  influx  of  hungry  settlers, 


48  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

together  with  an  occasional  bad  season,  decimated  their  ranks.  They  were  eaten 
by  the  farmers,  both  in  and  out  of  season.  Driven  from  pillar  to  post,  with  no  friends 
and  insufficient  food, — what  else  then  can  be  expected?" 

Mr.  F.  C.  Pellett,  of  Atlantic,  Iowa,  says:  "Unless  ways  can  be  devised  of  rearing 
these  birds  in  the  domestic  state,  the  prairie  hen  in  my  opinion  is  doomed  to  early 
extinction." 

The  older  inhabitants  here  say  that  there  is  not  one  song-bird  in  summer  where 
there  used  to  be  ten. — (G.  H.  Nicol,  in  Outdoor  Life  March,  1912.) 

Kansas: 

To  all  of  those  named  in  my  previous  list  that  are  not  actually  extinct,  I  might  add 
the  prairie  hen,  the  lesser  prairie  hen,  as  well  as  the  prairie  sharp-tailed  grouse  and 
the  wood-duck.  Such  water  birds  as  the  avocets,  godwits,  greater  yellow-legs,  long- 
billed  curlew  and  Eskimo  curlew  are  becoming  very  rare.  All  the  water  birds  that 
are  killed  as  game  birds  have  been  greatly  reduced  in  numbers  during  the  past  25 
years.  I  have  not  seen  a  wood-duck  in  5  years.  The  prairie  chicken  has  entirely  dis- 
appeared from  this  locality.  A  few  are  still  seen  in  the  sand  hills  of  western  Kansas,^ 
and  they  are  still  comparatively  abundant  along  the  extreme  southwestern  line,  and 
in  northern  Oklahoma  and  the  Texas  panhandle. — (C.  H.  Smyth,  Wichita.) 

Yellow-legged  plover,  golden  plover;  Hudsonian  and  Eskimo  curlew,  prairie 
chicken. — (James  Howard,  Wichita.) 

Louisiana: 

Ivory-billed  woodpecker,  butterball,  bufflehead.  The  wood-duck  is  greatly  dimin- 
ishing every  year,  and  if  not  completely  protected,  ten  years  hence  no  wood-duck 
will  be  found  in  Louisiana. — (Frank  M.  Miller,  and  G.  E.  Beyer,  New  Orleans.) 

Ivory-billed  woodpecker,  sandhill  crane,  whooping  crane,  pinnated  grouse,  Ameri- 
can and  snowy  egret  where  unprotected. — (E.  A.  Mcllhenny,    Avery  Island.) 

Maine: 

Wood-duck,  upland  plover,  purple  martin,  house  wren,  pileated  woodpecker,  bald 
eagle,  yellow-legs,  great  blue  heron,  Canada  goose,  redhead  and  canvasback  duck. — 
(John  F.  Sprague,  Dover.) 

Puffin,  Leach's  petrel,  eider  duck,  laughing  gull,  great  blue  heron,  fish-hawk  and 
bald  eagle. —  (Arthur  H.  Norton,  Portland.) 

Maryland: 

Curlew,  pileated  woodpecker,  summer  duck,  snowy  heron.  No  record  of  sandhill 
crane  for  the  last  35  years.  Greater  yellow-leg  is  much  scarcer  than  formerly,  also 
Bartramian  sandpiper.  The  only  two  birds  which  show  an  increase  in  the  past  few 
years  are  the  robin  and  lesser  scaup.  General  protection  of  the  robin  has  caused  its 
increase;  stopping  of  spring  shooting  in  the  North  has  probably  caused  the  increase 
of  the  latter.  As  a  general  proposition  I  think  I  can  say  that  all  birds  are  becoming- 
scarcer  in  this  state,  as  we  have  laws  that  do  not  protect,  little  enforcement  of  same, 
no  revenue  for  bird  protection  and  too  little  public  interest.  We  are  working  to  change 
all  this,  but  it  comes  slowly.  The  public  fails  to  respond  until  the  birds  are  'most  gone, 
and  we  have  a  pretty  good  lot  of  game  still  left.  The  members  of  the  Order  Gallina^ 
are  only  holding  their  own  where  privately  protected.  The  members  of  the  Plover 
Family  and  what  are  known  locally  as  shore  birds  are  still  plentiful  on  the  shores  of 
Chincoteague  and  Assateague,  and  although  they  do  not  breed  there  as  formerly, 
so  far  as  I  know  there  are  no  species  exterminated. — (Talbott  Denmead,  Baltimore.) 

Massachusetts  : 

Wood-duck,  hooded  merganser,  blue-winged  teal,  upland  plover;  curlew  (perhaps 
already  gone) ;  red-tailed  hawk  (I  have  not  seen  one  in  Middlesex  County  for  several 
years) ;  great  horned  owl  (almost  gone  in  my  county,  Middlesex) ;  house  wren.  The 
eave  swallows  and  purple  martins  are  fast  deserting  eastern  Massachusetts  and  the 
barn  swallows  steadily  diminishing  in  numbers.  The  bald  eagle  should  perhaps  be 
included  here.     I  seldom  see  or  hear  of  it  now. — (William  Brewster,  Cambridge.) 

Upland  plover,  woodcock,  wood-duck  (recent  complete  protection  is  helping  these 
somewhat),  heath  hen,  piping  plover,  golden  plover,  a  good  many  song  and  insec- 


EXTERMINATION   STATE    BY   STATE  49 

tivorous  birds  are  apparently  decreasing  rather  rapidly;    for  instance,  the  eave  swal- 
low.— (William  P.  Wharton,  GrotonJ 

Michigan: 

Wood-duck,  limicolae,  woodcock,  sandhill  crane.  The  great  whooping  crane  is  not 
a  wild  bird,  but  I  think  it  is  now  practically  extinct.  Many  of  our  warblers  and  song 
birds  are  now  exceedingly  rare.  Ruflfed  grouse  greatly  decreased  during  the  past  10 
years. — (W.  B.  Mershon,  Saginaw.) 

Minnesota: 

The  sandhill  crane  has  been  killed  by  sportsmen.  I  have  not  seen  one  in  three 
years.  Where  there  were,  a  few  years  ago,  thousands  of  blue  herons,  egrets,  wood 
ducks,  redbirds,  and  Baltimore  orioles,  all  those  birds  are  now  almost  extinct  in 
this  state.  They  are  being  killed  by  Austrians  and  Italians,  who  slaughter  every- 
thing that  flies  or  moves.  Robins,  too,  will  be  a  rarity  if  more  severe  penalties  are 
not  imposed.  I  have  seized  22  robins,  1  pigeon  hawk,  1  crested  log-cock,  4  wood- 
peckers and  1  grosbeak  in  one  camp,  at  the  Lertonia  mine,  all  being  prepared  for  eat- 
ing. I  have  also  caught  them  preparing  and  eating  sea  gulls,  terns,  blue  heron,  egret 
and  even  the  bittern.  I  have  secured  128  convictions  since  the  first  of  last  Sep- 
tember.— (George  E.  Wood,  Game  Warden,  Hibbing,  Minnesota.) 

From  Robert  Page  Lincoln,  Minneapolis. — Partridge  are  waning  fast,  quail  grad- 
ually becoming  extinct,  prairie  chickens  almost  extinct.  Duck-shooting  is  rare.  The 
gray  squirrel  is  fast  becoming  extinct  in  Minnesota.  Mink  are  going  fast,  and  fur- 
bearing  animals  generally  are  becoming  extinct.  The  game  is  passing  so  very  rapidly 
that  it  will  soon  be  a  thing  of  the  forgotten  past.  The  quail  are  suffering  most.  The 
falling  off  is  amazing,  and  inconceivable  to  one  who  has  not  looked  it  up.  Duck- 
shooting  is  rare,  the  clubs  are  idle  for  want  of  birds.  What  ducks  come  down  fly  high, 
being  harassed  coming  down  from  the  north.  I  consider  the  southern  Minnesota 
country  practically  cleaned  out. 

Missouri: 

The  birds  threatened  with  extermination  are  the  American  woodcock,  wood- duck, 
snowy  egret,  pinnated  grouse,  wild  turkey,  ruffed  grouse,  golden  eagle,  bald  eagle, 
pileated  woodpecker. 

Montana: 

Blue  grouse. — (Henry  Avare,  Helena.) 

Sage  grouse,  prairie  and  Columbian  sharp-tailed  grouse,  trumpeter  swan,  Canada 
goose,  in  fact,  most  of  the  water-fowl.  The  sickle-billed  curlew,  of  which  there  were 
many  a  few  years  ago,  is  becoming  scarce.  There  are  no  more  golden  or  black- 
bellied  plover  in  these  parts. — (Harry  P.  Stanford,  Kalispell.) 

Curlew,  Franklin  grouse  (fool  hen)  and  sage  grouse. — W.  R.  Felton,  Miles  City. 

Sage  grouse. — (L.  A.  Huffman,  Miles  City.) 

Ptarmigan,  wood-duck,  sharp-tailed  grouse,  sage  grouse,  fool  hen  and  plover.  All 
game  birds  are  becoming  scarce  as  the  country  becomes  settled  and  they  are  confined 
to  uninhabited  regions. — (Prof.  M.  J.  Elrod,  Missoula.) 

Nebraska: 

Grouse,  prairie  chicken  and  quail. — (H.  N.  Miller,  Lincoln.) 
Whistling  swan. — (Dr.  S.  G.  Towne,  Omaha.) 

New  Hampshire: 

Wood- duck  and  upland  plover. 

New  York: 

Quail,  woodcock,  upland  jjlover,  golden  plover,  black-bellied  plover,  willet,  dow- 
itcher,  red-breasted  sandpiper,  long-billed  curlew,  wood-duck,  purple  martin,  red- 
headed woodpecker,  mourning  dove;   gray  squirrel,  otter. 

New  Jersey: 

Ruffed  grouse,  teal,  canvasback,  red-head  duck,  widgeon,  and  all  species  of  shore 
birds,  the  most  noticeable  being  black-bellied  plover,  dowitcher,  golden  plover,  killdeer. 


50  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

sickle-bill  curlew,  upland  plover  and  English  snipe;  also  the  mourning  dove. — (James 
M.  Stratton  and  Ernest  Napier,  Trenton.) 

Upland  plover,  apparently  killdeer,  egret,  wood-duck,  woodcock,  and  probably 
others. — (B.  vS.  Bowdish,  Demarest.) 

North  Carolina: 

Forster's  tern,  oystercatcher,  egret  and  snowy  egret. — (T.  Gilbert  Pearson,  Sec. 
Nat.  Asso.  Audubon  vSocieties.) 

Ruflfed  grouse  rapidly  disappearing;  bobwhite  becoming  scarce. — (E.  L.  Ewbank, 
Hendersonville.) 

Perhaps  American  and  snowy  egret.  If  long-billed  curlew  is  not  extinct,  it  seems 
due  to  become  so.  No  definite,  reliable  record  of  it  later  than  1885. — (H.  H.  Brim- 
ley,  Raleigh.) 

North  Dakota: 

Wood-duck,  prairie  hen,  upland  plover,  sharp-tailed  grouse,  canvas-back,  pinnated 
and  ruffed  grouse,  double-crested  cormorant,  blue  heron,  long-billed  curlew,  whooping 
crane  and  white  pelican. — (W.  B.  Bell,  Agricultural  College.) 

Upland  plover,  marbled  godwit,  Baird's  sparrow,  chestnut-collared  longspur. — 
(Alfred  Eastgate,  Tolna.) 

Ohio: 

White  heron,  pileated  woodpecker  (if  not  already  extinct).  White  heron  reported 
a  number  of  times  last  year;  occurrences  in  Sandusky,  Huron,  Ashtabula  and  several 
other  counties  during  1911.  These  birds  would  doubtless  rapidly  recruit  under  a 
proper  federal  law. — (Paul  North,  Cleveland.) 

Turtle  dove,  quail,  red-bird,  wren,  hummingbird,  wild  canary  [goldfinch]  and 
blue  bird.— (Walter  C.  Staley,  Dayton.) 

Oklahoma: 

Pinnated    grouse. — (J.   C.    Clark);    otter,    kit   fox,    black-footed   ferret. — (G.   W. 
Stevens.) 

Oregon: 

American  egret,  snowy  egret. — (W.  L.  Finley,  Portland.) 

Pennsylvania: 

Virginia  partridge  and  woodcock. — (Arthur  Chapman.) 

Wood-duck,  least  bittern,  phalarope,  woodcock,  duck  hawk  and  barn  swallow. — • 
(Dr.  Chas.  B.  Penrose.) 
Wild  turkey;   also  various  transient  and  straggling  water  birds. — (Witmer  Stone.) 

Rhode  Island: 

Wood-duck,  knot,  greater  yellow-legs,  upland  plover,  golden  plover,  piping  plover, 
great  horned  owl. — (Harry  S.  Hathaway,  South  Auburn.) 

South  Carolina: 

Wood  duck,  abundant  6  years  ago,  now  almost  gone.  Wild  turkey  (abundant  up 
to  1898) ;  woodcock,  upland  plover,  Hudsonian  curlew  Carolina  rail,  Virginia  rail, 
clapper  rail  and  coot.  Black  bear  verging  on  extinction,  opossum  dwindling  rapidly. — 
(James  H.  Rice  Jr.,  Summerville.) 

South  Dakota: 

Prairie  chicken  and  quail  are  most  likely  to  become  extinct  in  the  near  future. — 
(W.  F.  Bancroft,  Watertown.) 

Texas  : 

Wild  turkey  and  prairie  chickens. — (J.  D.  Cox,  Austin  ) 

Plover,  all  species;  curlew,  cardinal,  road-runner,  woodcock,  wood-duck,  canvas- 
back,  cranes,  all  the  herons;  wild  turkey;  quail,  all  varieties;  prairie  chicken  and 
Texas  guan.— (Capt.  M.  B.  Davis,  Waco.) 

Curlew,  very  rare ;  plover,  very  rare ;  antelope.  (Answer  applies  to  the  Panhandle 
of  Texas. — Chas.  Goodnight.) 


EXTERMINATION   STATE   BY  STATE  51 

Everything  [is  threatened  with  extinction]  save  the  dove,  which  is  a  migrating  bird. 
Antelope  nearly  all  gone. — (Col.  O.  C.  Guessaz,  San  Antonio.) 

Utah  : 

Our  wild  birds  are  well  protected,  and  there  are  none  that  are  threatened  with 
extinction.  They  are  increasing.— (Fred.  W.  Chambers,  State  Game  Warden,  Salt 
Lake  City.) 

Vermont: 

If  all  states  afforded  as  good  protection  as  does  Vermont,  none;  but  migrating  birds 
like  woodcock  are  now  threatened.— (John  W.  Tilcomb,  State  Game  Warden,  Lyn- 
don ville.) 

Virginia: 

Pheasants  (raffed  grouse),  wild  turkey  and  other  game  birds  are  nearly  extinct.  A 
few  bears  remain,  and  deer  in  small  numbers  in  remote  sections.  In  fact,  all  animals 
show  great  reduction  in  numbers,  owing  to  cutting  down  forests,  and  constant  gun- 
ning.— (L.  T.  Christian,  Richmond.) 

West  Virginia: 

Wood-duck,  wild  turkey,  northern  raven,  dickcissel. — (Rev.  Earle  A.  Brooks, 
Weston.) 

Wild  turkeys  are  very  scarce,  also  ducks.  Doves,  once  numerous,  now  almost  nil. 
Eagles,  except  a  few  in  remote  fastnesses.  Many  native  song-birds  are  retreating 
before  the  English  sparrow. — (William  Perry  Brown,  Glenville.) 

Wood-duck  and  wild  turkey.— (J.  A.  Viquesney,  Belington.) 

Wisconsin: 

Double-crested  cormorant,  upland  plover,  white  pelican,  long-billed  curlew,  lesser 
snow  goose,  Hudsonian  curlew,  sandhill  crane,  golden  plover,  woodcock,  dowitcher 
and  long-billed  duck;  spruce  grouse,  knot,  prairie  sharp-tailed  grouse,  marbled  god- 
wit  and  bald  eagle.  All  these,  formerly  alaundant,  must  now  be  called  rare  in  Wis- 
consin.— (Prof.  George  E.  Wagner,  Madison.) 

Common  tern,  knot,  American  white  pelican,  Hudsonian  godwit,  trumpeter  swan, 
long-billed  curlew,  snowy  heron,  Hudsonian  curlew,  American  avocet,  prairie  sharp- 
tailed  grouse,  dowitcher,  passenger  pigeon.  Long-billed  dowitcher  and  northern 
hairy  woodpecker. — (Henry  L.  Ward,  Milwaukee  Public  Museum.) 

Wood-duck,  ruddy  duck,  black  mallard,  grebe  or  hell-diver,  tern  and  woodcock. — 
(Fred.  Gerhardt,  Madison.) 

Wyoming: 

Sage  grouse  and  sharp-tailed  grouse  are  becoming  extinct,  both  in  Wyoming  and 
North  Dakota.  Sheridan  and  Johnson  Counties  (Wyoming)  have  sage  grouse  pro- 
tected until  1915.  The  miners  (mostly  foreigners)  are  out  after  rabbits  at  all  sea- 
sons. To  them  everything  that  flies,  walks  or  swims,  large  enough  to  be  seen,  is  a 
"rabbit."  They  are  even  worse  than  the  average  sheep-herder,  as  he  will  seldom 
kill  a  bird  brooding  her  young,  but  to  one  of  those  men,  a  wren  or  creeper  looks  like 
a  turkey.  Antelope,  mountain  sheep  and  grizzly  bears  are  going,  fast!  The  moose 
season  opens  in  1915,  for  a  30  days  open  season,  then  close  season  until  1920. — 
(Howard  Eaton,  Wolf.) 

Sage  grouse,  blue  grouse,  curlew,  sandhill  crane,  porcupine  practically  extinct; 
wolverine  and  pine  marten  nearly  all  gone. — (S.  N.  Leek,  Jackson's  Hole.) 

CANADA 

Alberta : 

Swainson's  buzzard  and  sandhill  crane  are  now  practically  extinct.  Elk  and  ante- 
lope will  soon  be  as  extinct  as  the  buffalo.— (Arthur  G.  Wooley-Dod,  Calgary.) 

British  Columbia: 

Wild  fowl  are  in  the  greatest  danger  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Province,  especially 
the  wood-duck.     Otherwise  birds  are  increasing  rather  than  otherwise,  especially  the 


52  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

small  non-game  birds.     The  sea  otter  is  almost  extinct. — (A.  Bryan  Williams,  Pro- 
vincial Game  Warden,  Vancouver.) 

Manitoba: 

Whooping  crane,  vs^ood-duck  and  golden  plover.  Other  species  begin  to  show  a 
marked  increase,  due  to  our  stringent  protective  measures.  For  example,  the  pinnated 
grouse  and  sharp-tailed  grouse  are  more  plentiful  than  in  15  years.  Prong-homed 
antelope  and  wolf  are  threatened  with  extinction. — (J.  P.  Turner,  Winnipeg.) 

The  game  birds  indigenous  to  this  Province  are  fairly  plentiful.  Though  the 
prairie  chicken  was  very  scarce  some  few  years  ago,  these  birds  have  become  very 
plentiful  again,  owing  to  the  strict  enforcement  of  our  present  "Game  Act."  The 
elk  are  in  danger  of  becoming  extinct  if  they  are  not  stringently  guarded.  Beaver 
and  otter  were  almost  extinct  some  few  years  ago,  but  are  now  on  the  increase,  owing 
to  a  strict  enforcement  of  the  "Game  Act." — (Charles  Barber,  Winnipeg.) 

New  Brunswick: 

Partridge,  plover  and  woodcock.  Moose  and  deer  are  getting  more  plentiful  every 
year.— (W.  W.  Gerard,  St.  John.) 

Nova  Scotia: 

The  Canada  grouse  may  possibly  become  extinct  in  Nova  Scotia,  unless  the  pro- 
tection it  now  enjoys  can  save  it.  The  American  golden  plover,  which  formerly  came 
in  immense  flocks,  is  now  very  rare.  Snowflakes  are  very  much  less  common  than 
formerly,  but  I  think  this  is  because  our  winters  are  now  usually  much  less  severe. 
The  caribou  is  almost  extinct  on  the  mainland  of  Nova  Scotia,  but  is  still  found  in 
North  Cape  Breton  Island.  The  wolf  has  become  excessively  rare,  but  as  it  is  found 
in  New  Brunswick,  it  may  occur  here  at  any  time  again.  The  beaver  had  been  threat- 
ened with  extinction;  but  since  being  protected,  it  has  multiplied,  and  is  now  on  a 
fairly  safe  footing  again. — (Curator  of  Museum,  Halifax.) 

Ontario: 

Quail  are  getting  scarce. — (E.  Tinsley,  Toronto.) 

Wood-duck,  bob  white,  woodcock,  golden  plover,  Hudsonian  curlew,  knot  and  dow- 
itcher  [are  threatened  with  extinction.] — (C.  W.  Nash,  Toronto.) 

Prince  Edward  Island: 

The  species  threatened  with  extinction  are  the  golden  plover,  American  woodcock, 
pied-billed  grebe,  red-throated  loon,  sooty  shearwater,  gadwall,  ruddy  duck,  black- 
crowned  night  heron,  Hudsonian  godwit,  kildeer,  northern  pileated  woodpecker, 
chimney  swift,  yellow-bellied  flycatcher,  red- winged  blackbird,  pine  finch,  magnolia 
warbler,  ruby-crowned  kinglet. ^(E.  T.  Carbonell,  Charlottetown.) 

In  closing  the  notes  of  this  survey,  I  repeat  my  assurance  that  they 
are  not  offered  on  a  basis  of  infalHbiHty.  It  would  require  years  of  work 
to  obtain  answers  from  forty-eight  states  to  the  three  questions  that  I 
have  asked  that  could  be  offered  as  absolutely  exact.  All  these  reports 
are  submitted  on  the  well-recognized  court-testimony  basis, — "to  the  best 
of  our  knowledge  and  belief."  Gathered  as  they  have  been  from  persons 
whose  knowledge  is  good,  these  opinions  are  therefore  valuable;  and 
they  furnish  excellent  indices  of  wild-life  conditions  as  they  exist  in  1912 
in  the  various  states  and  provinces  of  North  America  north  of  Mexico. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  REGULAR  ARMY  OF  DESTRUCTION 

In  order  to  cure  any  disease,  the  surgeon  must  make  of  it  a  correct 
diagnosis.  It  is  useless  to  try  to  prescribe  remedies  without  a  thorough 
understanding  of  the  trouble. 

That  the  best  and  most  interesting  wild  life  of  America  is  disappearing 
at  a  rapid  rate,  we  all  know  only  too  well.  That  proposition  is  entirely 
beyond  the  domain  of  argument.  The  fact  that  a  species  or  a  group  of 
species  has  made  a  little  gain  here  and  there,  or  is  stationary,  does  not 
sensibly  diminish  the  force  of  the  descending  blow.  The  wild-life  situ- 
ation is  full  of  surprises.  For  example,  in  1902  I  was  astounded  by  the 
extent  to  which  bird  life  had  decreased  over  the  130  miles  between  Miles 
City,  Montana,  and  the  Missouri  River  since  1886;  for  there  was  no  rea- 
son to  expect  anything  of  the  kind.  Even  the  jack  rabbits  and  coyotes 
had  almost  totally  disappeared. 

The  duties  of  the  present  hour,  that  fairly  thrust  themselves  into  our 
faces  and  will  not  be  put  aside,  are  these: 

First, — To  save  valuable  species  from  extermination ! 

Second, — To  preserve  a  satisfactory  representation  of  our  once  rich 
fauna,  to  hand  down  to  Posterity. 

Third, — To  protect  the  farmer  and  fruit  grower  from  the  enormous 
losses  that  the  destruction  of  our  insectivorous  and  rodent-eating  birds 
is  now  inflicting  upon  both  the  producer  and  consumer. 

Fourth, — To  protect  our  forests,  by  protecting  the  birds  that  keep 
down  the  myriads  of  insects  that  are  destructive  to  trees  and  shrubs. 

Fifth, — To  preserve  to  the  future  sportsmen  of  America  enough  game 
and  fish  that  they  may  have  at  least  a  taste  of  the  legitimate  pursuit  of 
game  in  the  open  that  has  made  life  so  interesting  to  the  sportsmen  of 
to-day. 

For  any  civilized  nation  to  exterminate  valuable  and  interesting  spe- 
cies of  wild  mammals,  birds  or  fishes  is  more  than  a  disgrace.  It  is  a  crime ! 
We  have  no  right,  legal,  moral  or  commercial,  to  exterminate  any  valu- 
able or  interesting  species;  because  none  of  them  belong  to  us,  to  exter- 
minate or  not,  as  we  please. 

For  the  people  of  any  civilized  nation  to  permit  the  slaughter  of  the 
wild  birds  that  protect  its  crops,  its  fruits  and  its  forests  from  the  insect 
hordes,  is  worse  than  folly.  It  is  sheer  orneryness  and  idiocy.  People 
who  are  either  so  lazy  or  asinine  a^  to  permit  the  slaughter  of  their  best 


54  OVR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

friends  deserve  to  have  their  crops  destroyed  and  their  forests  ravaged. 
They  deserve  to  pay  twenty  cents  a  pound  for  their  cotton  when  the 
boll  weevil  has  cut  down  the  normal  supply. 

It  is  very  desirable  that  we  should  now  take  an  inventory  of  the 
forces  that  have  been,  and  to-day  are,  active  in  the  destruction  of  our 
wild  birds,  mammals,  and  game  fishes.  During  the  past  ten  years  a 
sufficient  quantity  of  facts  and  figures  has  become  available  to  enable 
us  to  secure  a  reasonably  full  and  accurate  view  of  the  whole  situation. 
As  we  pause  on  our  hill-top,  and  survey  the  field  of  carnage,  we  find  that 
we  are  reviewing  the  Army  oj  Destruction! 

It  is  indeed  a  motley  array.  We  see  true  sportsmen  beside  ordinary 
gunners,  game-hogs  and  meat  hunters;  handsome  setter  dogs  are  mixed 
up  with  coyotes,  cats,  foxes  and  skunks;  and  well-gowned  women  and 
ladies'  maids  are  jostled  by  half-naked  "poor- white"  and  black-negro 
"plume  hunters." 

Verily,  the  destruction  of  wild  life  makes  strange  companions. 

Let  us  briefly  review  the  several  army  corps  that  together  make  up 
the  army  of  the  destroyers.  Space  in  this  volume  forbids  an  extended 
notice  of  each.  Unfortunately  it  is  impossible  to  segregate  some  of  these 
classes,  and  number  each  one,  for  they  merge  together  too  closely  for 
that ;  but  we  can  at  least  describe  the  several  classes  that  form  the  great 
mass  of  destroyers. 

The  Gentlemen  Sportsmen. — These  men  are  the  very  bone  and 
sinew  of  wild  life  preservation.  These  are  the  men  who  have  red  blood 
in  their  veins,  who  annually  hear  the  red  gods  calling,  who  love  the  earth, 
the  mountains,  the  woods,  the  waters  and  the  sky.  These  are  the  men  to 
whom  "the  bag"  is  a  matter  of  small  importance,  and  to  whom  "the 
bag-limit"  has  only  academic  interest;  because  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
they  do  not  care  to  kill  all  that  the  law  allows.  The  tenth  and  exceptional 
time  is  when  the  bag  limit  is  "one."  A  gentleman  sportsman  is  a  man 
who  protects  game,  stops  shooting  when  he  has  "enough" — without 
reference  to  the  legal  bag-limit,  and  whenever  a  species  is  threatened 
with  extinction,  he  conscientiously  refrains  from  shooting  it. 

The  true  sportsmen  of  the  world  are  the  men  who  once  were  keen  in 
the  stubble  or  on  the  trail,  but  who  have  been  halted  by  the  general 
slaughter  and  the  awful  decrease  of  game.  Many  of  them,  long  before  a 
hair  has  turned  gray,  have  hung  up  their  guns  forever,  and  turned  to  the 
camera.  These  are  the  men  who  are  willing  to  hand  out  checks,  or  to 
leave  their  mirth  and  their  employment  and  go  to  the  firing  line  at  their 
state  Capitols,  to  lock  horns  with  the  bull-headed  killers  of  wild  life  who 
recognize  no  check  or  limit  save  the  law. 

These  are  the  men  who  have  done  the  most  to  put  upon  our  statute 
books  the  laws  that  thus  far  have  saved  some  of  our  American  game 
from  total  annihilation,  and  who  (so  we  firmly  believe)  will  be  chiefly 
instrumental  in  tightening  the  lines  of  protection  around  the  remnant. 
These  are  the  men  who  are  making  and  stocking  game  preserves,  public 
and  private,  great  and  small. 


56  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

If  you  wish  to  know  some  of  these  men,  I  will  tell  you  where  to  find 
a  goodly  number  of  them;  and  when  you  find  them,  you  will  also  find 
that  they  are  men  you  would  enjoy  camping  with !  Look  in  the  member- 
ship lists  of  the  Boone  and  Crockett  Club,  Camp-Fire  Club  of  America, 
the  Lewis  and  Clark  Club  of  Pittsburgh,  the  New  York  State  League, 
the  Shikar  Club  of  London,  the  Society  for  the  Preservation  of  the  Wild 
Fauna  of  the  British  Empire,  the  Massachusetts  Fish  and  Game  Pro- 
tective Association,  the  Springfield  (Mass.)  Sportsmen's  Association,  the 
Camp-Fire  Clubs  of  Detroit  and  Chicago,  and  the  North  American  Fish 
and  Game  Protective  Association. 

There  are  other  bodies  of  sportsmen  that  I  would  like  to  name,  were 
space  available,  but  to  set  down  here  a  complete  list  is  quite  impossible. 

The  best  and  the  most  of  the  game-protective  laws  now  in  force  iri  the 
United  States  and  Canada  were  brought  into  existence  through  the  ini- 
tiative and  efforts  of  the  real  sportsmen  of  those  two  nations.  But  for 
their  activity,  exerted  on  the  right  side,  the  settled  portion  of  North 
America  would  to-day  be  an  utterly  gameless  land !  Even  though  the 
sportsmen  have  taken  their  toll  of  the  wilds,  they  have  made  the  laws 
that  have  saved  a  remnant  of  the  game  until  1912. 

For  all  that,  however,  every  man  who  still  shoots  game  is  a  soldier  in 
the  Army  of  Destruction !  There  is  no  blinking  that  fact.  Such  men  do 
not  stand  on  the  summit  with  the  men  who  now  protect  the  game  and 
do  not  shoot  at  all!  The  millions  of  men  who  do  not  shoot,  and  who  also 
do  nothing  to  protect  or  preserve  wild  life,  do  not  count !  In  this  warfare 
they  are  merely  ciphers  in  front  of  the  real  figures. 

The  Gunners,  Who  Kill  to  the  Limit. — Out  of  the  enormous  mass 
of  men  who  annually  take  up  arms  against  the  remnant  of  wild  life,  and 
dre  called  " sportsmen^"  I  believe  that  only  one  out  of  every  500 
conscientiously  stops  shooting  when  game  becomes  scarce,  and  extinction 
is  impending.  All  of  the  others  feel  that  it  is  right  and  proper  to  kill 
all  the  game  that  they  can  kill  up  to  the  legal  bag  limit.  It  is  the  reasoning 
of  Shylock: 

"Justice  demands  it,  and  the  law  doth  give  it!" 

Especially  is  this  true  of  the  men  who  pay  their  one  dollar  per  year  for 
a  resident  hunting  license,  and  feel  that  in  doing  so  they  have  done  a 
great  Big  Thing! 

This  is  a  very  deadly  frame  of  mind.  Ethically  it  is  entirely  wrong; 
and  at  least  two  million  men  and  boys  who  shoot  American  game  must 
be  shown  that  it  is  wrong!  This  is  the  spirit  of  Extermination,  clothed 
in  the  robes  of  Law  and  Justice. 

Whenever  and  wherever  game  birds  are  so  scarce  that  a  good  shot 
who  hunts  hard  during  a  day  in  the  fields  finds  only  three  or  four  birds,  he 
should  stop  shooting  at  once,  and  devote  his  mind  and  energies  to  the  prob- 
lem of  bringing  back  the  game!  It  is  strange  that  conditions  do  not  make 
this  duty  clear  to  every  conscientious  citizen. 

The  Shylock  spirit  which  prompts  a  man  to  kill  all  that  "the  law 
allows"  is  a  terrible  scourge  to  the  wild  life  of  America,  and  to  the  world 


REGULAR    ARMY   OF   DESTRUCTION  57 

at  large.  It  is  the  spirit  of  extermination  according  to  law.  Even  the 
killing  of  game  for  the  market  is  not  so  great  a  scourge  as  this;  for  this 
spirit  searches  out  the  game  in  every  nook  and  cranny  of  the  world,  and 
spares  not.  In  effect  it  says:  "If  the  law  is  defective,  it  is  right  forme  to 
take  every  advantage  of  it !  I  do  not  need  to  have  any  conscience  in  the 
matter  outside  the  letter  of  the  law.'" 

The  extent  to  which  this  amazing  spirit  prevails  is  positively  awful. 
You  will  find  it  among  pseudo  game-protectors  to  a  paralyzing  extent ! 
It  is  the  great  gunner's  paradox,  and  it  pervades  this  country  from 
corner  to  corner.  No:  there  is  no  use  in  trying  to  "educate"  the  mass 
of  the  hunters  of  America  out  of  it,  as  a  means  of  saving  the  game;  for 
positively  it  can  not  be  done!  Do  not  waste  time  in  trying  it.  If  you 
rely  upon  it,  you  will  be  doing  a  great  wrong  to  wild  life,  and  promoting 
extermination.  The  only  remedy  is  sweeping  laws,  for  long  close  seasons, 
for  a  great  many  species.  Forget  the  paltry  dollar-a-year  license  money. 
The  license  fees  never  represent  more  than  a  tenth  part  of  the  value  of 
the  game  that  is  killed  under  licenses. 

The  savage  desire  to  kill  "all  that  the  law  allows"  often  is  mani- 
fested in  men  in  whom  we  naturally  expect  to  find  a  very  different  spirit. 
By  way  of  rllumination,  I  offer  three  cases  out  of  the  many  that  I  could 
state. 

Case  No.  1.  The  Duck  Breeder. — A  gentleman  of  my  acquaintance 
has  spent  several  years  and  much  money  in  breeding  wild  ducks.  From 
my  relations  with  him,  I  had  acquired  the  belief  that  he  was  a  great  lover 
of  ducks,  and  at  least  wished  all  species  well.  One  whizzing  cold  day  in 
winter  he  called  upon  me,  and  stated  that  he  had  been  duck-hunting; 
which  surprised  me.  He  added,  "I  have  just  spent  two  days  on  Great 
South  Bay,  and  I  made  a  great  killing.  In  the  two  days  I  got  ninety-four 
ducks!" 

I  said,  "  How  could  you  do  it, — caring  for  wild  ducks  as  you  do.^" 
"Well,  I  had  hunted  ducks  twice  before  on  Great  South  Bay  and 
didn't  have  very  good  luck;    but  this  time  the  cold  weather  drove  the 
ducks  in,  and  I  got  square  with  them!" 

Case  No.  2.  The  Ornithologist. — A  short  time  ago  the  news  was  pub- 
lished in  Forest  and  Stream  that  a  well-known  ornithologist  had  distin- 
guished himself  in  one  of  the  mid-western  states  by  the  skill  he  had  dis- 
played in  bagging  thirty-four  ducks  in  one  day,  greatly  to  the  envy  of 
the  natives ;  and  if  this  shoe  fits  any  American  naturalist,  he  is  welcome 
to  put  it  on  and  wear  it. 

Case  No.  3.  The  Sportsman. — A  friend  of  mine  in  the  South  is  the 
owner  of  a  game  preserve  in  which  wild  ducks  are  at  times  very  numerous. 
Once  upon  a  time  he  was  visited  by  a  northern  sportsmen  who  takes  a 
deep  and  abiding  interest  in  the  preservation  of  game.  The  sportsman 
was  invited  to  go  out  duck-shooting;  ducks  being  then  in  season  there. 
He  said: 

"Yes,  I  will  go;   and  T  want  you  to  put  me  in  a  place  where  I  can  kill 


58 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


G.  O.  SHIELDS 
A  Notable  Defender  of  Wild  Life 


a  hundred  ducks  in  a  day!  I  never 
have  done  that  yet,  and  I  would  like 
to  do  it,  once!" 

"All  right,"  said  my  friend,  "I  can 
put  you  in  such  a  place ;  and  if  you  can 
shoot  well  enough,  you  can  kill  a  hun- 
dred ducks  in  a  day." 

The  effort  was  made  in  all  earnest- 
ness. There  was  much  shooting,  but 
few  were  the  ducks  that  fell  before  it. 
In  concluding  this  story  my  friend 
remarked  in  a  tone  of  disgust : 

"All  the  game-preserving  sports- 
men that  come  to  me  are  just  like 
that!  They  want  to  kill  all  they  can 
kill!'' 

There  is  a  blood-test  by  which  to 
separate  the  conscientious  sportsmen 
from  the  mere  gunners.    Here  it  is : 
A  sportsman  stops  shooting  when  game  becomes  scarce;   knd  he  does 
not  object  to  long-close-season  laws;  but 

A  gunner  beheves  in  killing  "all  that  the  law  allows;"  and  he  objects 
to  long  close  seasons! 

I  warrant  that  whenever  and  wherever  this  test  is  applied  it  will 
separate  the  sheep  from  the  goats.  It  applies  in  all  America,  all  Asia 
and  Africa,  and  in  Greenland,  with  equal  force. 

The  Game-Hog. — This  term  was  coined  by  G.  O.  Shields,  in  1897, 
when  he  was  editor  and  owner  of  Recreation  Magazine,  and  it  has  come 
into  general  use.  It  has  been  recognized  by  a  judge  on  the  bench  as  being 
an  appropriate  term  to  apply  to  all  men  who  selfishly  slaughter  wild  game 
beyond  the  limits  of  decency.  Although  it  is  a  harsh  term,  and  was  mer- 
cilessly used  by  Mr.  Shields  in  his  fierce  war  on  the  men  who  slaughtered 
game  for  "sport,"  it  has  jarred  at  least  a  hundred  thousand  men  into 
their  first  realization  of  the  fact  that  to-day  there  is  a  difference  between 
decency  and  indecency  in  the  pursuit  of  game.  The  use  of  the  term  has 
done  very  great  good;  but,  strange  to  say,  it  has  made  for  Mr.  Shields  a 
great  many  enemies  outside  the  ranks  of  the  game-hogs  themselves! 
From  this  one  might  fairly  suppose  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  sym- 
pathetic game-hog! 

One  thing  at  least  is  certain.  During  a  period  of  about  six  years,  while 
his  war  with  the  game-hogs  was  on,  from  Maine  to  California,  Mr. 
Shields's  name  became  a  genuine  terror  to  excessive  killers  of  game; 
and  it  is  reasonably  certain  that  his  war  saved  a  great  number  of  game 
birds  from  the  slaughter  that  otherwise  would  have  overtaken  them ! 

The  number  of  armed  men  and  boys  who  annually  take  the  field  in 
the  United  States  in  the  pursuit  of  birds  and  quadrupeds,  is  enormous. 


REGULAR   ARMY  OF  DESTRUCTION 


59 


People  who  do  not  shoot  have  no  conception  of  it ;  and  neither  do  they 
comprehend  the  mechanical  perfection  and  fearful  deadliness  of  the 
weapons  used.  This  feature  of  the  situation  can  hardly  be  realized  until 
some  aspect  of  it  is  actually  seen. 

I  have  been  at  some  pains  to  collect  the  latest  figures  showing  the 
number  of  hunting  licenses  issued  in  1911,  but  the  total  is  incomplete. 
In  some  states  the  figures  are  not  obtainable,  and  in  some  states  there 
are  no  hunters'  license  laws.  The  figures  of  hunting  licenses  issued  in 
1911  that  I  have  obtained  from  official  sources  are  set  forth  below. 

The  United  States  Army  of  Destruction 
Hunting  Licenses  issued  in  igi  i 


Alabama 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut .  .  . 

Idaho 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Massachusetts . 

Michigan 

Missouri 


o 

138 

41 

19 

50 

192 

54 

91 

44 

76 

2 

45 

22 

66 


090 
689 
058 
635 
342 
244 
813 
000 
069 
000 
552 
039 
323 
,662 


Montana 

Nebraska 

New  Hampshire  .  .  . 

New  Jersey 

New  Mexico 

New  York 

Rhode  Island 

South  Dakota .... 

Utah 

Vermont 

Washington,  about 

Wisconsin 

Wyoming 


59,291 
39,402 
33,542 
61,920 

7,000 
150,222 

0,541 
31,054 
27,800 
31,762 
40,000 
138,457 

9,721 


Total  number  of  regularly  licensed  gunners      1,486,228 


The  average  for  the  twenty-seven  states  that  issued  licenses  as  shown 
above  is  55,046  for  each  state. 

Now,  the  twenty-one  states  issuing  no  licenses,  or  not  reporting, 
produced  in  1911  fully  as  many  gunners  per  capita  as  did  the  other  twenty- 
seven  states.  Computed  fairly  on  existing  averages  they  must  have 
turned  out  a  total  of  1,155,966  gunners,  making  for  all  the  tJnited  States 
2,642,194  armed  men  and  boys  warring  upon  the  remnant  of  game  in 
1911.  We  are  not  counting  the  large  number  of  lawless  hunters  who  never 
take  out  licenses.  Now,  is  Mr.  Beard's  picture  a  truthful  presentation, 
or  not  ? 

New  York  with  only  deer,  ruffed  grouse,  shore-birds,  ducks  and  a  very 
few  woodcock  to  shoot  annually  puts  into  the  field  150,222  armed  men. 
In  1909  they  killed  about  9,000  deer! 

New  Jersey,  spending  $30,000  in  1912  in  efforts  to  restock  her  covers 
with  game,  and  with  a  population  of  2,537,167,  sent  out  in  1911  a  total 
army  of  61,920  well-armed  gunners.    How  can  any  of  her  game  survive? 

New  Hampshire,  with  only  430,572  population,  has  33,542  licensed 
hunters, — equal  to  thirty-three  regiments  of  full  strength! 

Vermont,  with  355,956  people,  sends  out  annually  an  army  of  31,762 
men  who  hunt  according  to  law;  and  in  1910  they  killed  3,649  deer. 


60  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Utah,  with  only  373,351  population,  had  27,800  men  in  the  field  after 
her  very  small  remnant  of  game !    How  can  any  wild  thing  of  Utah  escape  ? 

Montana,  population  376,053,  had  in  1911  an  army  of  59,291  well- 
armed  men,  warring  chiefly  upon  the  big  game,  and  swiftly  extermi- 
nating it. 

How  long  can  any  of  the  big  game  stand  before  the  army  of  two  and 
one-half  million  well-armed  men,  eager  and  keen  to  kill,  and  out  to  get 
an  equivalent  for  their  annual  expenditure  in  guns,  ammunition  and 
other  expenses  ? 

In  addition  to  the  hunters  themselves,  they  are  assisted  by  thousands 
of  expert  guides,  thousands  of  horses,  thousands  of  dogs,  hundreds  of 
automobiles  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  tents.  Each  big-game  hunter 
has  an  experienced  guide  who  knows  the  haunts  and  habits  of  the  game, 
the  best  feeding  grounds,  the  best  trails,  and  everything  else  that  will  aid 
the  hunter  in  taking  the  game  at  a  disadvantage  and  destroying  it.  The  big- 
game  rifles  are  of  the  highest  power,  the  longest  range,  the  greatest  accu- 
racy and  the  best  repeating  mechanism  that  modern  inventive  genius  can 
produce.  It  is  said  that  in  Wyoming  the  Maxim  silencer  is  now  being 
used.  England  has  produced  a  weapon  of  a  new  type,  called  "the  scatter 
rifle,  "  which  is  intended  for  use  on  ducks.  The  best  binoculars  are  used 
in  searching  out  the  game,  and  horses  carry  the  hunters  and  guides  as  near 
as  possible  to  the  game.  For  bears,  baits  are  freely  used,  and  in  the  pur- 
suit of  pumas,  dogs  are  employed  to  the  limit  of  the  available  supply. 

The  deadliness  of  the  automobile  in  hunting  already  is  so  apparent 
that  North  Dakota  has  wisely  and  justly  forbidden  their  use  by  law, 
(1911).  The  swift  machine  enables  city  gunmen  to  penetrate  game 
regions  they  could  not  reach  with  horses,  and  hunt  through  from  four 
to  six  localities  per  day,  instead  of  one  only,  as  formerly.  The  use  of 
automobiles  in  hunting  should  be  everywhere  prohibited. 

Every  appliance  and  assistance  that  money  can  buy,  the  modern 
sportsman  secures  to  help  him  against  the  game.  The  game  is  beset  dur- 
ing its  breeding  season  by  various  wild  enemies, — foxes,  cats,  wolves, 
pumas,  lynxes,  eagles,  and  many  other  predatory  species.  The  only  help 
that  it  receives  is  in  the  form  of  an  annual  close  season — which  thus  far  has 
saved  in  America  only  a  few  local  moose,  white-tailed  deer  and  a  few  game 
birds,  from,  steady  and  sure  extermination. 

The  hag  limits  on  which  vast  reliance  is  placed  to  preserve  the  wild  game, 
are  a  fraud,  a  delusion  and  a  snare!  The  few  local  exceptions  only  prove 
the  generality  of  the  rule.  In  every  state,  without  one  single  exception, 
the  bag  limits  are  far  too  high,  and  the  laws  are  of  deadly  liberality.  In 
many  states,  the  bag  limit  laws  on  birds  are  an  absolute  dead  letter. 
Fancy  the  125  wardens  of  New  York  enforcing  the  bag-limit  laws  on  150,- 
000  gunners!  It  is  this  horrible  condition  that  is  enabling  the  licensed 
army  of  destruction  to  get  in  its  deadly  work  on  the  game,  all  over  the 
world.  In  America,  the  over-liberality  of  the  laws  are  to  blame  for  two- 
thirds  of  the  carnival  of  slaughter,  and  the  successful  evasions  of  the  law 
are  responsible  for  the  other  third. 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


^^I^^^I^^^C^^Biffl 

^ 

^^^^^^^^^Ek^    T       "l 

m 

Blb| 

,                          1 

H 

ISK 

Ih 

WHY  THE  SANDHILL  CRANE  IS  BECOMING  EXTINCT 
Ninteen  of  Them  Killed  as  "Game"  by  Three  Gunners.      (Note  the  Machine  Gun.  i 

The  only  remedy  for  the  present  extermination  of  game  according  to 
law  that  so  rapidly  and  so  furiously  is  proceeding  all  over  the  United 
States,  Canada,  Alaska,  and  Africa,  is  ten-year  close  seasons  on  all  the 
species  threatened  with  extinction,  and  immensely  reduced  open  seasons 
and  bag  limits  on  all  the  others. 

Will  the  people  who  still  have  wild  game  take  heed  now,  and  clamp 
down  the  brakes,  hard  and  fast  before  it  is  too  late,  or  will  they  have  their 
game  exterminated  ? 

Shall  we  have  five-year  close  seasons,  or  close  seasons  of  500  years? 
We  must  take  our  choice. 

Shall  we  hand  down  to  our  children  a  gameless  continent,  with  all  the 
shame  that  such  a  calamity  will  entail  ? 

We  have  got  to  answer  these  questions  like  men,  or  they  will  soon  be 
answered  for  us  by  the  extermination  of  the  wild  life.  For  twenty-five 
years  we  have  been  smarting  under  the  disgrace  of  the  extermination  of 
our  bison  millions.  Let  us  not  repeat  the  dose  through  the  destruction 
of  other  species. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE    GUERRILLAS    OF    DESTRUCTION 

We  have  now  to  deal  with  The  Guerrillas  of  Destruction. 

In  warfare,  a  guerrilla,  or  bushwhacker,  is  an  armed  man  who  recog- 
nizes none  of  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare,  and  very  often  has  no  com- 
mander. In  France  he  is  called  a  "  franc-tireur, "  or  free-shooter.  The 
guerrilla  goes  out  to  live  on  the  country,  to  skulk,  to  war  on  the  weak,  and 
never  attack  save  from  ambush,  or  when  the  odds  clearly  are  on  his  side. 
His  military  status  is  barely  one  remove  from  that  of  the  spy. 

The  meat-shooters  who  harry  the  game  and  other  wild  life  in  order  to 
use  it  as  a  staple  food  supply;  the  Italians,  negroes  and  others  who  shoot 
song-birds  as  food ;  the  plume-hunters  and  the  hide-and-tusk  hunters  all 
over  the  world  are  the  guerrillas  of  the  Army  of  Destruction.  Let  us 
consider  some  of  these  grand  divisions  in  detail. 

Here  is  an  inexorable  law  of  Nature,  to  which  there  are  no  exceptions : 

No  wild  species  of  bird,  mammal,  reptile  or  fish  can  withstand  exploita 
tion  for  commercial  purposes. 

The  men  who  pursue  wild  creatures  for  the  money  or  other  value  there 
is  in  them,  never  give  up.  They  work  at  slaughter  when  other  men  are 
enjoying  life,  or  are  asleep.  If  they  are  persistent,  no  species  on  which 
they  fix  the  Evil  Eye  escapes  extermination  at  their  hands. 

Does  anyone  question  this  statement?  If  so  let  him  turn  backward 
and  look  at  the  lists  of  dead  and  dying  species. 

The  Division  of  Meat-Shooters  contains  all  men  who  sordidly 
shoot  for  the  frying-pan, — to  save  bacon  and  beef  at  the  expense  of  the 
public,  or  for  the  markets.  There  are  a  few  wilderness  regions  so  remote 
and  so  difficult  of  access  that  the  transportation  of  meat  into  them  is  a 
matter  of  much  difficulty  and  expense.  There  are  a  very  few  men  in 
North  America  who  are  justified  in  "living  off  the  country,"  for  short 
periods.  The  genuine  prospectors  always  have  been  counted  in  this  class ; 
but  all  miners  who  are  fully  located,  all  lumbermen  and  railway-builders 
certainly  are  not  in  the  prospector's  class.  They  are  abundantly  able  to 
maintain  continuous  lines  of  communication  for  the  transit  of  beef  and 
mutton. 

Of  all  the  meat-shooters,  the  market-gunners  who  prey  on  wild  fowl 
and  ground  game  birds  for  the  big-city  markets  are  the  most  deadly  to 
wildlife.  Enough  geese,  ducks,  brant,  quail,  ruffed  grouse,  prairie  chick- 
ens, heath  hens  and  wild  pigeons  have  been  butchered  by  gunners  and 
netters  for  "the  market"  to  have  stocked  the  whole  world.     No  section 


64 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


A   MARKET   GUNNER  AT  WORK   OX    MARSH   ISLAND 

Killing  Mallards  for  the  New  Orleans  Market.     The  Purchase  of  This  Island  by  Mrs.  Russell  Sage  has  now 

Converted  it  Into  a  Bird  Sanctuary. 


containing  a  good  supply  of  game  has  escaped.  In  the  United  States  the 
great  slaughtering-grounds  have  been  Cape  Cod;  Great  South  Bay,  New 
York;  Currituck  Sound,  North  Carolina;  Marsh  Island,  Louisiana;  the 
southwest  corner  of  Louisiana;  the  Sunk  Lands  of  Arkansas;  the  lake 
regions  of  Minnesota ;  the  prairies  of  the  whole  middle  West ;  Great  Salt 
Lake;  the  Klamath  Lake  region  (Oregon)  and  southern  California. 

The  output  of  this  systematic  bird  slaughter  has  supplied  the  greedy 
game  markets  of  Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Washington,  Balti- 
more, Chicago,  New  Orleans,  St.  Louis,  Salt  Lake  City,  San  Francisco, 
Portland,  and  Seattle.  The  history  of  this  industry,  its  methods,  its 
carnage,  its  profits  and  its  losses  would  make  a  volume,  but  we  can  not 
enter  upon  it  here.  Beyond  reasonable  doubt,  this  awful  traffic  in  dead 
game  is  responsible  for  at  least  three-fourths  of  the  slaughter  that  has 
reduced  our  game  birds  to  a  mere  remnant  of  their  former  abundance. 
There  is  no  influence  so  deadly  to  wild  life  as  that  of  the  market  gunner 
who  works  six  days  a  week,  from  sunrise  until  sunset,  hunting  down  and 
killing  every  game  bird  that  he  can  reach  with  a  choke-bore  gun. 

During  the  past  five  years,  several  of  the  once-great  kilHng  grounds 
have  been  so  thoroughly  "shot  out"  that  they  have  ceased  to  hold  their 
former  rank.  This  is  the  case  with  the  Minnesota  Lakes,  the  Sunk  Lands 
of  Arkansas,  the  Klamath  Lakes  of  Oregon,  and  I  think  it  is  also  true  of 
southern  California.  The  Klamath  Lakes  have  been  taken  over  by  the 
Government  as  a  bird  refuge.  Currituck  Sound,  at  the  northeastern 
corner  of  North  Carolina,  has  been  so  bottled  up  by  the  Bayne  law  of  New 


GUERRILLAS  OF   DESTRUCTION 


65 


RUFFED  GROUSE 
A  Common  Victim  of  Illegal  Slaughter 


York  State  that  Currituck's 
greatest  market  has  been 
cut  off.  Last  year  only  one- 
half  the  usual  number  of 
ducks  and  geese  were  killed ; 
and  already  many  "pro- 
fessional "  duck  and  brant 
shooters  have  abandoned 
the  business  because  the 
commission  merchants  no 
longer  will  buy  dead  birds. 
Very  many  enormous 
bags  of  game  have  been 
made  in  a  day  by  market 
gunners:  but  rarely  have 
they  published  any  of  their 
records.  The  greatest  kill  of 
which  I  ever  have  heard  oc- 
curred under  the  auspices  of 
the  Glenn  County  Club,  in  southern  California,  on  February  5,  1906. 
Two  men,  armed  with  automatic  shot-guns,  fired  five  shots  apiece,  and 
got  ten  geese  out  of  one  flock.  In  one  hour  they  killed  two  hundred  and 
eighteen  geese,  and  their  bag  for  the  day  was  four  hundred  and  fifty  geese! 
The  shooter  who  wrote  the  story  for  publication  (on  February  12,  at 
Willows,  Glenn  County,  California)  said:  "It  being  warm  weather,  the 
birds  had  to  be  shipped  at  once  in  order  to  keep  them  from  spoiling." 
A  photograph  was  made  of  the  "one  hour's  slaughter"  of  two  hundred 
and  eighteen  geese,  and  it  was  published  in  a  western  magazine  with 
"C.  H.  B.'s"  story,  nearly  all  of  which  will  be  found  in  Chapter  XV. 

The  reasons  why  market  shooting  is  so  deadly  destructive  to  wild  life 
are  not  obscure. 

The  true  sportsman  hunts  during  a  very  few  days  only  each  year. 
The  market  gunners  shoot  early  and  late,  six  days  a  week,  month  after 
month.  When  game  is  abundant,  the  price  is  low,  and  a  great  quantity 
must  be  killed  in  order  to  make  it  pay  well.  When  game  is  scarce,  the 
market  prices  are  high,  and  the  shooter  makes  the  utmost  exertions  to 
find  the  last  of  the  game  in  order  to  secure  the  "big  money." 

When  game  is  protected  by  law,  thousands  of  people  with  money 
desire  it  for  their  tables,  just  the  same,  and  are  willing  to  pay  fabulous 
prices  for  what  they  want,  when  they  want  it.  Many  a  dealer  is  quite 
willing  to  run  the  risk  of  fines,  because  fines  don't  really  hurt;  they  are 
only  annoying.  The  dealer  wishes  to  make  the  big  profit,  and  retain  his 
customers;  "and  besides,"  he  reasons,  "if  I  don't  supply  him  some  one 
else  will ;   so  what  is  the  difference  ? ' ' 

When  game  is  scarce,  prices  high  and  the  consumer's  money  ready, 
there  are  a  hundred  tricks  to  which  shooters  and  dealers  willingly  resort 
to  ship  and  receive  unlawful  game  without  detection.     It  takes  the  very 


66 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


Prom  "  Rod  and  Gun  in  Canada  " 

A   PERFECTLY   LAWFUL   BAG   OF   58   RUFFED   GROUSE   FOR   TWO    MEN 


best  kind  of  game  wardens, — genuine  detectives,  in  fact, — to  ferret  out 
these  cunning  illegal  practices,  and  catch  lawbreakers  "with  the  goods 
on  them,"  so  that  they  can  be  punished.  Mind  you,  convictions  can  not 
be  secured  at  both  ends  of  the  line  save  by  the  most  extraordinary  good 
fortune,  and  usually  the  shooter  and  shipper  escape,  even  when  the 
dealer  is  apprehended  and  fined. 

Here  are  some  of  the  methods  that  have  been  practiced  in  the  past 
in  getting  illegal  game  into  the  New  York  market : 

Ruffed  grouse  and  quail  have  both  been  shipped  in  butter  firkins, 
marked  ' '  butter ' ' ;  and  latterly,  butter  has  actually  been  packed  solidly 
on  top  of  the  birds. 

Ruffed  grouse  and  quail  very  often  have  been  shipped  in  egg  crates, 
marked  "eggs."     They  have  been  shipped  in  trunks  and  suit  cases, — a 


GUERRILLAS   OF  DESTRUCTION  67 

very  common  method  for  illegal  game  birds,  all  over  the  United  States. 
In  Oklahoma  when  a  man  refuses  to  open  his  trunk  for  a  game  warden, 
the  warden  joyously  gets  out  his  brace  and  bitt,  and  bores  an  inch  hole 
into  the  lower  story  of  the  trunk.  If  dead  birds  are  there,  the  tell-tale 
auger  quickly  reveals  them. 

Three  years  ago,  I  was  told  that  certain  milk-wagons  on  Long  Island 
made  daily  collections  of  dead  ducks  intended  for  the  New  York  market, 
and  the  drivers  kindly  shipped  them  by  express  from  the  end  of  the  route. 

Once  upon  a  time,  a  New  York  man  gave  notice  that  on  a  certain  date 
he  would  be  in  a  certain  town  in  St.  Lawrence  County,  New  York,  with  a 
palace  horse-car,  "to  buy  horses."  Car  and  man  appeared  there  as  adver- 
tised. Very  ostentatiously,  he  bought  one  horse,  and  had  it  taken  aboard 
the  car  before  the  gaze  of  the  admiring  populace.  At  night,  when  the 
A.  P.  had  gone  to  bed,  many  men  appeared,  and  into  the  horseless  end  of 
that  car,  they  loaded  thousands  of  ruffed  grouse.  The  game  warden  who 
described  the  incident  to  me  said:  "That  man  pulled  out  for  New  York 
with  one  horse  and  half  a  car  load  of  ruffed  grouse!'' 

Whenever  a  good  market  exists  for  the  sale  of  game,  as  sure  as  the 
world  that  market  will  be  supplied.  Twenty-six  states  forbid  by  law 
the  sale  of  their  own  "protected"  game,  but  twenty  of  them  do  not 
expressly  prohibit  the  sale  of  game  stolen  from  neighboring  states !  That 
is  a  very,  very  weak  point  in  the  laws  of  all  those  states.  A  child  can  see 
how  it  works.    Take  Pittsburgh  as  a  case  in  point. 

In  the  winter  and  spring  of  1912  the  State  Game  Commission  of 
Pennsylvania  found  that  quail  and  ruffed  grouse  were  being  sold  in 
Pittsburgh,  in  large  quantities.  The  state  laws  were  well  enforced,  and 
it  was  believed  that  the  birds  were  not  being  killed  in  Pennsylvania. 
Some  other  state  was  being  robbed! 

The  Game  Commission  went  to  work,  and  in  a  very  short  time  certain 
game-dealers  of  Pittsburgh  were  arrested.  At  first  they  tried  to  bluff 
their  way  out  of  their  difficulty,  and  even  went  as  far  as  to  bring  charges 
against  the  game-warden  whom  the  Commission  had  instructed  to  buy 
some  of  their  illegal  game,  and  pay  for  it.  But  the  net  of  the  law  tightened . 
upon  them  so  quickly  and  so  tightly  that  they  threw  up  their  hands  and 
begged  for  mercy. 

It  was  found  that  those  Pittsburgh  game-dealers  were  selling  quail 
and  grouse  that  had  been  stolen  in  thousands,  from  the  state  of  Ken- 
tucky! Between  the  state  game  laws,  working  in  lovely  harmony  with 
the  Lacey  federal  law  that  prohibits  the  shipment  of  game  illegally  killed 
or  sold,  the  whole  bad  business  was  laid  bare,  and  signed  confessions 
were  promptly  obtained  from  the  shippers  in  Kentucky. 

At  that  very  time,  a  good  bill  for  the  better  protection  of  her  game 
was  before  the  Kentucky  legislature;  and  a  certain  member  was  vigor- 
ously opposing  it,  as  he  had  successfully  done  in  previous  years.  He  was 
told  that  the  state  was  being  robbed,  but  refused  to  believe  it.  Then  a 
signed  confession  was  laid  before  him,  bearing  the  name  of  the  man  who 
was  instigating  his  opposition, — his  friend, — who  confessed  that  he  had 


68 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


■i't. 


A  Great 


SNOW  BUNTING 

"  Game  Bird  "  !     Of  These.  8,058  Were  Pound  in  1902 
in  one  New  York  Cold-Storage  Warehouse 


illegally  bought  and  shipped 
to  Pittsburgh  over  5,000 
birds.  The  objector  literal- 
ly threw  up  his  hands,  and 
said,  "I  have  been  wrong! 
Let  the  bill  go  through!" 
And  it  went. 

Before  the  passage  of 
the  Bayne  law,  New  York 
City  was  a  "fence"  for  the 
sale  of  grouse  illegally 
killed  in  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  Pennsylva- 
nia, New  Jersey  and  I 
know  not  how  many  other 
states.  The  Bayne  law 
stopped  all  that  business, 
abruptly  and  forever;  and 
if  the  ruffed  grouse,  quail  and  ducks  of  the  Eastern  States  are  offered  for 
sale  in  Chicago,  Cincinnati,  Baltimore  and  Washington,  the  people  of 
New  York  and  Massachusetts  can  at  least  be  assured  that  they  are  not 
to  blame.  Those  two  states  now  maintain  no  "fences"  for  the  sale  of 
game  that  has  been  stolen  from  other  states.  They  have  both  set  their 
houses  in  order,  and  set  two  examples  for  forty  other  states  to  follow. 

The  remedy  for  all  this  miserable  game-stealing,  law-breaking  busi- 
ness is  simple  and  easily  obtained.  Let  each  state  of  the  United  States 
and  each  province  and  Canada  enact  a  Bayne  law,  absolutely  prohibiting 
the  sale  of  all  wild  native  game,  and  the  thing  is  done !  But  nothing  short 
of  that  will  be  really  effective.  It  will  not  do  at  all  to  let  state  laws  rest 
with  merely  forbidding  the  sale  of  game  "protected  by  the  State;"  for 
that  law  is  full  of  loop-holes.  It  does  much  good  service,  yes;  but  what 
earthly  objection  can  there  be  in  any  state  to  the  enactment  of  a  law 
that  is  sweepingly  effective,  and  which  can  not  be  evaded,  save  through 
the  criminal  connivance  of  officers  of  the  law  ? 

By  way  of  illustration,  to  show  what  the  sale  of  wild  game  means  to 
the  remnant  of  our  game,  and  the  wicked  slaughter  of  non-game  birds  to 
which  it  leads,  consider  these  figures: 

Dead   Birds  Found  in    one   Cold   Storage    House    in    New  York 

IN  1902. 


Snow  Buntings 8,058 

Sandpipers 7,607 

Plover 5,218 

Snipe 7,003 

Yellow-legs 788 


Grouse 7,560 

Quail 4,385 

Ducks 1,756 

Bobolinks 288 

Woodcock 96 


The  fines  for  this  lot,  if  imposed,  would  have  amounted  to  $1,168,316 


GUERRILLAS   OF  DESTRUCTION  69 

Shortly  after  that  seizure  American  quail  became  so  scarce  that  in 
effect  they  totally  disappeared  from  the  banquet  tables  of  New  York.  I 
can  not  recall  having  been  served  with  one  since  1903,  but  the  little  Egyp- 
tian quail  can  be  legally  imported  and  sold  when  officially  tagged. 

Few  persons  away  from  the  firing  line  realize  the  far-reaching  effects 
of  the  sale  of  wild  game.    Here  are  a  few  flashes  from  the  searchlight : 

At  Hangkow,  China,  Mr.  C.  William  Beebe  found  that  during  his 
visit  in  1911,  over  46,000  pheasants  of  various  species  were  shipped  from 
that  port  on  one  cold-storage  steamer  to  the  London  market.  And  this 
when  English  pheasants  were  selling  in  the  Covent  Garden  market  at 
from  two  to  three  shillings  each,  for  fresh  birds ! 

In  1910,  1,200  ptarmigan  from  Norway,  bound  for  the  Chicago  mar- 
ket, passed  through  the  port  of  New  York, — not  by  any  means  the  first 
or  the  last  shipment  of  the  kind.  The  epicures  of  Chicago  are  being  per- 
mitted to  comb  the  game  out  of  Norway. 

In  1910,  70,000  dozen  Egyptian  quail  were  shipped  to  Europe  from 
Alexandria,  Egypt.  Just  why  that  species  has  not  already  been  extermi- 
nated, is  a  zoological  mystery ;  but  extermination  surely  will  come  some 
day,  and  I  think  it  will  be  in  the  near  future. 

The  coast  of  China  has  been  raked  and  scraped  for  wild  ducks  to  ship 
to  New  York, — prior,  to  the  passage  of  the  Bayne  law!  I  have  forgotten 
the  figures  that  once  were  given  me,  but  they  were  an  astonishing  num- 
ber of  thousands  for  the  year. 

The  Division  of  Negroes  and  Poor  Whites  who  kill  song  and  other 
birds  indiscriminately  will  be  found  in  a  separate  chapter. 

The  Division  of  "Resident"  Game-Butchers. — This  refers  to  the 
men  who  live  in  the  haunts  of  big  game,  where  wardens  are  the  most  of 
the  time  totally  absent,  and  where  bucks,  does  and  fawns  of  hoofed  big 
game  may  be  killed  in  season  and  out  of  season,  with  impunity.  It  in- 
cludes guides,  ranchmen,  sheep-herders,  cowboys,  miners,  lumbermen 
and  floaters  generally.  In  times  past,  certain  taxidermists  of  Montana 
promoted  the  slaughter  of  wild  bison  in  the  Yellowstone  Park,  and  it  was 
a  pair  of  rascally  taxidermists  who  killed,  or  caused  to  be  killed  in  Lost 
Park,  in  1897,  the  very  last  bison  of  Colorado. 

It  seems  to  be  natural  for  the  minds  of  men  who  live  in  America  in 
the  haunts  of  big  game  to  drift  into  the  idea  that  the  wild  game  around 
them  is  all  theirs.  Very  few  of  them  recognize  the  fact  that  every  other 
man,  woman  and  child  in  a  given  state  or  province  has  vested  rights  in 
its  wild  game.  It  is  natural  for  a  frontiersman  to  feel  that  because  he  is 
in  the  wilds  he  has  a  God-given  right  to  li-ve  off  the  country ;  but  to-day 
that  idea  is  totally  wrong!  If  some  way  can  not  be  found  to  curb  that  all- 
pervading  propensity  among  our  frontiersmen,  then  we  may  as  well  bid 
all  our  open-field  big  game  a  long  farewell;  for  the  deadly  "residents" 
surely  will  exterminate  it,  outside  the  game  preserves.  The  "residents" 
are,  in  my  opinion,  about  ten  times  more  destructive  than  the  sportsmen. 
A  sportsman  in  quest  of  large  game  is  in  the  field  only  from  ten  to  thirty 


70  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

days;  all  his  movements  are  known,  and  all  his  trophies  are  seen  and 
counted.  His  killing  is  limited  by  law,  and  upon  him  the  law  is  actually 
enforced.  Often  a  resident  hunts  the  whole  twelve  months  of  the  year, — 
for  food,  for  amusement,  and  for  trophies  to  sell.  Rarely  does  a  game 
warden  reach  his  cabin;  because  the  wardens  are  few,  the  distances 
great  and  the  frontier  cabins  are  widely  scattered. 

Mr.  Carl  Pickhardt  told  me  of  a  guide  in  Newfoundland  who  had  a 
shed  in  the  woods  hanging  full  of  bodies  of  caribou,  and  who  admitted  to 
him  that  while  the  law  allowed  him  five  caribou  each  year,  he  killed 
each  year  about  twenty-five. 

Mr.  J.  M.  Phillips  knows  of  a  mountain  in  British  Columbia,  once 
well  stocked  with  goats,  on  which  the  goats  have  been  completely  ex- 
terminated by  one  man  who  lives  within  easy  striking  distance  of  them, 
and  who  finds  goat  meat  to  his  liking. 

I  have  been  reliably  informed  that  in  1911,  at  Haha  Lake,  near  Grande 
Bay,  Saguenay  District,  P.  Q.,  one  family  of  six  persons  killed  thirty-four 
woodland  caribou  and  six  moose.  This  meant  the  waste  of  about  14,000 
pounds  of  good  meat,  and  the  death  of  several  female  animals. 

In  1886  I  knew  a  man  named  Owens  who  lived  on  the  head  of  Sunday 
Creek,  Montana,  who  told  me  that  in  1884-5  he  killed  thirty-five  mule 
deer  for  himself  and  family.  The  family  ate  as  much  as  possible,  the 
dogs  ate  all  they  could,  and  in  the  spring  the  remainder  spoiled.  Now 
there  is  not  a  deer,  an  antelope,  or  a  sage  grouse  within  fifty  miles  of  that 
lifeless  waste. 

Here  is  a  Montana  object  lesson  on  the  frame  of  mind  of  the  "resi- 
dent" hunter,  copied  from  Outdoor  Life  Magazine  (Denver)  for  Febru- 
ary, 1912.     It  is  from  a  letter  to  the  Editor,  written  by  C.  B.  Davis. 

November  27,  28,  29,  and  30,  1911,  will  remain  a  red  letter  day  with  a  half  thou- 
sand men  for  years  to  come.  These  half  thousand  men  gathered  along  the  border  of  the 
Yellowstone  National  Park,  near  Gardiner,  Montana,  at  a  point  known  as  Buffalo 
Flats,  to  exterminate  elk.  The  snow  had  driven  the  elk  down  to  the  foothills,  and 
Buffalo  Flats  is  on  the  border  of  the  park  and  outside  the  park.  The  elk  entered  this 
little  valley  for  food.  Like  hungry  wolves,  shooters,  not  hunters,  gathered  along  the 
border  waiting  to  catch  an  elk  off  the  "reservation"  and  kill  it. 

On  November  27th  about  1500  elk  crossed  the  line,  and  the  slaughter  began.  I 
have  not  the  data  of  the  number  killed  this  day,  but  it  was  hundreds. 

On  the  28th,  twenty-two  stepped  over  and  were  promptly  executed.  Like  Custer's 
band,  not  one  escaped.  On  the  evening  of  the  28th,  600  were  sighted  just  over  the  line, 
and  the  army  of  125  brave  men  entrenched  themselves  for  the  battle  which  was  ex- 
pected to  open  next  morning.  Before  daylight  of  the  29th  the  battle  began.  The  elk- 
were  over  the  line,  feeding  on  Buffalo  Flats.  One  hundred  and  twenty-five  men  poured 
bullets  into  this  band  of  600  elk  till  the  ground  was  red  with  blood  and  strewn  with 
carcasses,  and  in  their  madness  they  shot  each  other.  One  man  was  shot  through  the 
ear, — a  close  call;  another  received  a  bullet  through  his  coat  sleeve,  and  another  was 
shot  through  the  bowels  and  can't  live. 

My  informer  told  me  he  participated  in  the  slaughter,  and  while  he  would  not 
take  fifty  dollars  for  what  he  saw,  and  the  experience  he  went  through,  yet  he  would  not 
go  through  it  again  for  $1,000.  When  my  informer  got  back  to  Gardiner  that  day  there 
were  four  sleigh  loads  of  elk,  each  load  containing  from  twenty  to  thirty-five  elk,  be- 
sides thirty-two  mules  and  horses  carrying  one  to  two  each.     This  was  only  a  part  of 


GUERRILLAS  OF  DESTRUCTION  71 

the  slaughter.  Hundreds  more  were  carried  to  other  points;  and  this  was  only  one 
day's  work. 

Hundreds  of  wounded  elk  wandered  back  into  the  park  to  die,  and  others  died  out- 
side the  park.  The  station  at  Livingston,  Montana,  for  a  week  looked  like  a  packing 
house.  Carcassef  were  piled  up  on  the  trucks  and  depot  platform.  The  baggage  cars 
were  loaded  with  elk  going  to  points  east  and  west  of  Livingston. 

Maybe  this  is  all  right.  Maybe  the  government  can't  stop  the  elk  from  crossing 
the  line.  Maybe  the  elk  were  helped  over;  but  it  strikes  me  there  is  something  wrong 
somewhere. 

The  Division  of  Hired  Laborers. — The  scourge  of  lumber-camps 
in  big-game  territory,  the  mining  camps  and  the  railroad-builders  is  a 
long  story,  and  if  told  in  detail  it  would  make  several  chapters.  Their 
awful  destruotiveness  is  well  known.  It  is  a  common  thing  for  "the 
boss"  to  hire  a  hunter  to  kill  big  game  to  supply  the  hungry  outfit,  and 
save  beef  and  pork. 

The  abuses  arising  from  this  source  easily  could  be  checked,  and  finally 
suppressed.  A  ten-line  law  would  do  the  business, — forbidding  any  per- 
son employed  in  any  camp  of  sheep  men,  cattle  men,  lumbermen,  miners, 
railway  laborers  or  excavators  to  own  or  use  a  rifle  in  hunting  wild  game ; 
and  forbidding  any  employer  of  labor  to  feed  those  laborers,  or  permit 
them_  to  be  fed,  on  the  flesh  of  wild  game  mammals  or  birds.  "Camp" 
laborers  are  not  "pioneers;"  not  by  a  long  shot!  They  are  soldiers  of 
Commerce,  and  makers  of  money. 

A  Mountain  Sheep  Case  in  Colorado. — The  state  of  Colorado 
sincerely  desires  to  protect  and  perpetuate  its  slender  remnant  of  moun- 
tain sheep,  but  as  usual  the  Lawless  Miscreant  is  abroad  to  thwart  the 
efforts  of  the  guardians  of  the  game.  Every  state  that  strives  to  protect 
its  big  game  has  such  doings  as  this  to  contend  with : 

In  the  winter  of  1911-12,  a  resident  poacher  brought  into  Grant,  Colo- 
rado, a  lot  of  mountain  sheep  meat  for  sale;  and  he  actually  sold  it  to 
residents  of  that  town!  The  price  was  six  cents  per  pound.  A  lot  of  it 
was  purchased  by  the  railway  station-agent.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the 
same  man  who  did  that  job,  which  was  made  possible  only  by  the  co- 
operation of  the  citizens  of  Grant,  will  try  the  same  poaching-and-selling 
game  next  winter,  unless  the  ^tate  Game  Commissioner  is  able  to  bring 
him  to  book. 

A  Wyoming  Case  in  Point. — As  a  fair  sample  of  what  game  wardens, 
and  the  general  public,  are  sometimes  compelled  to  endure  through  the 
improper  decisions  of  judges,  I  will  cite  this  case: 

In  the  Shoshone  Mountains  of  northern  Wyoming,  about  fifty  miles 
or  so  from  the  town  of  Cody,  in  the  winter  of  1911-12  a  man  was  engaged 
in  trapping  coyotes.  It  was  currently  reported  that  he  had  been  "driven 
out  of  Montana  and  Idaho."  He  had  scores  of  traps.  He  baited  his 
traps  with  the  flesh  of  deer,  elk  calves  and  grouse,  all  illegally  killed  and 
illegally  used  for  that  purpose.  A  man  of  my  acquaintance  saw  some  of 
this  game  meat  actually  used  as  described. 

The  man  was  a  notorious  character,  and  cruel  in  the  extreme.    Finallv 


72  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

a  game  warden  caught  him  red-handed,  arrested  him.  and  took  him  to 
Cody  for  trial.  It  happened  that  the  judge  on  the  bench  had  once 
trapped  with  him,  and  therefore  "he  set  the  game-killer  free,  while  the 
game- warden  was  roasted." 

That  wolf-trapper  once  took  into  the  mountains  a  horse,  to  kill  and 
use  as  bear-bait.  The  animal  was  blind  in  one  eye,  and  because  it  would 
not  graze  precisely  where  the  wolfer  desired  it  to  remain,  he  deliberately 
destroyed  the  sight  of  its  good  eye,  and  left  it  for  days,  without  the  abil- 
ity to  find  water. 

Think  of  the  fate  of  any  wild  animal  that  unkind  Fat^  places  at  the 
mercy  of  such  a  man !  | 


CHAPTER  VIII 
UNSEEN   FOES   OF  WILD   LIFE 

Quite  unintentionally  on  his  part,  Man,  the  arch  destroyer  and  the 
most  predatory  and  merciless  of  all  animal  species  except  the  wolves, 
has  rendered  a  great  service  to  all  the  birds  that  live  or  nest  upon  the 
ground.  His  relentless  pursuit  and  destruction  of  the  savage-tempered, 
strong-jawed  fur-bearing  animals  is  in  part  the  salvation  of  the  ground 
birds  of  to-day  and  yesterday.  If  the  teeth  and  claws  had  been  per- 
mitted to  multiply  unchecked  down  to  the  present  time,  with  man's 
warfare  on  the  upland  game  proceeding  as  it  has  done,  scores  upon 
scores  of  species  long  ere  this  would  have  been  exterminated. 

But  the  slaughter  of  the  millions  of  North  American  foxes,  wolves, 
weasels,  skunks,  and  mink  has  so  overwhelmingly  reduced  the  four- 
footed  enemies  of  the  birds  that  the  balance  of  wild  Nature  has  been 
preserved.  As  a  rule,  the  few  predatory  wild  animals  that  remain  are 
not  slaughtering  the  birds  to  a  serious  extent;  and  for  this  we  may  well 
be  thankful. 

The  Domestic  Cat. — In  such  thickly  settled  communities  as  our 
northern  states,  from  the  Atlantic  coast  to  the  sandhills  of  Kansas  and 
Nebraska,  the  domestic  cat  is  probably  the  greatest  four-footed  scourge 
of  bird  life.  Thousands  of  persons  who  never  have  seen  a  hunting  cat 
in  action  will  doubt  this  statement,  but  the  proof  of  its  truthfulness  is 
only  too  painfully  abundant. 

Unhappily  it  is  the  way  of  the  hunting  cat  to  stalk  unseen,  and  to 
kill  the  very  birds  that  are  most  friendly  with  man,  and  most  helpful 
to  him  in  his  farming  and  fruit-growing  business.  The  quail  is  about 
the  only  game  bird  that  the  cat  affects  seriously,  and  to  it  the  cat  is  very 
destructive.  It  is  the  robin,  catbird,  thrush,  bluebird,  dove,  woodpecker, 
chickadee,  phoebe,  tanager  and  other  birds  of  the  lawn,  the  garden  and 
orchard  that  afford  good  hunting  for  sly  and  savage  old  Thomas. 

When  I  was  a  boy  in  my  'teens,  I  had  a  lasting  series  of  object  lessons 
on  the  cat  as  a  predatory  animal.  Our  "Betty"  was  the  most  ambitious 
and  successful  domestic-cat  hunter  of  wild  mammals  of  which  I  ever 
have  heard.  To  her,  rats  and  mice  were  mere  child's-play,  and  after  a 
time  their  pursuit  offered  such  tame  sport  that  she  sought  fresh  fields 
for  her  prowess.  Then  she  brought  in  young  rabbits,  chipmunks  and 
thirteen-lincd  spermophiles,  and  once  she  came  in,  quite  exhausted,  half 
dragging  and  half  carrying  a  big,  fat  pocket  gopher.  With  her  it  seemed 
to  be  a  point  of  honor  that  she  should  bring  in  her  game  and  display  it. 
Little  did  we  realize  then  that  in  course  of  time  the  wild  birds  would 


74  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

become  so  scarce  that  their  slaughter  by  house  cats  would  demand  legis- 
lative action  in  the  states. 

In  considering  the  hunting  cat,  let  us  call  in  a  credible  witness  of  the 
effects  of  domestic  cats  on  the  bob  white.  The  following  is  an  eye-witness 
report,  by  Ernest  B.  Beardsley,  in  Outdoor  Life  for  April,  1912.  The 
locality  was  Wellington,  Sumner  County,  Kansas. 

In  the  meantime,  old  Queen  was  having  a  high  old  time  up  ahead,  some  hundred 
feet  by  then,  running  up  the  bank  and  back  down  in  the  draw.  We  had  hardly  caught 
up  when  up  goes  Mr.  Savage's  gun  and  he  gives  both  barrels.  I  had  seen  nothing  up 
to  date,  but  I  didn't  have  long  to  wait,  for  by  the  time  I  got  up  to  him  and  the  dog, 
they  were  both  in  the  high  grass  and  had  a  great,  big,  common  gray  maltese  house-cat; 
and  Queen  had  a  half-eaten  quail  that  Mr.  Cat  was  busy  with  when  disturbed. 

Well,  we  followed  the  draw  across  the  field  and  got  nine  of  a  covey  of  sixteen  that 
had  been  ahead  of  Mr.  Cat;  and  about  four  o'clock  that  evening  we  killed  another 
white-and-gray  cat.  Wliile  driving  home  that  night,  Mr.  Savage  told  me  that  he  had 
killed  fifty  or  more  in  three  or  four  years.  They  will  get  in  a  draw  full  of  tumble-grass, 
on  a  cold  day  when  quail  don't  like  to  fly,  and  stay  right  with  them;  and  even  after 
feeding  on  two  or  three,  they  will  lie  and  watch,  and  when  the  covey  moves,  they  move. 
When  eating  time  comes  around  they  are  at  it  again,  and  to  a  covey  of  young  birds 
they  are  sure  death  to  the  whole  covey. 

Well,  Will  told  me  never  to  overlook  a  house-cat  that  I  found  as  far  as  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  from  a  farm  or  ranch,  for  if  they  have  not  already  turned  wild,  they  are 
learning  how  easy  it  is  to  hunt  and  live  on  game,  and  are  almost  as  bad.  We  found 
Mr.  Black-and-White  Hunter  had  eaten  two  quail  just  before  we  killed  him  that 
evening.  I  would  rather  not  write  what  Mr.  Savage  said  when  we  found  the  remains 
of  a  partly-eaten  bird. 

My  advice  is,  don't  let  tame  cats  get  away  when  found  out  hunting;  for  the 
chances  are  they  have  not  seen  a  home  in  months,  and  maybe  years, — and  say!  but 
they  do  get  big  and  bad.  When  you  meet  one,  give  it  to  him  good,  and  don't 
let  your  dog  run  up  to  him  until  he  is  out  for  keeps.  I  learned  afterwards  that  was 
how  Will  knew  it  was  a  cat.  Queen  had  learned  to  back  off  and  call  for  help  on  cats 
some  years  before. 

In  the  New  York  Zoological  Park,  we  have  had  troubles  of  our  own 
with  marauding  cats.  They  establish  themselves  in  a  day,  and  quickly 
learn  where  to  seek  easy  game  and  good  cover.  In  the  daytime  they  lie 
close  in  the  thick  brush,  exactly  as  tigers  do  in  India,  but  if  not  molested 
for  a  period  of  days,  they  become  bold  and  attack  game  in  open  view. 
One  bird-killing  cat  was  so  shy  of  man  that  it  was  only  after  two  weeks 
of  hard  hunting  (mornings  and  evenings)  that  it  was  killed. 

We  have  seen  cats  catch  and  kill  gray  squirrels,  chipmunks,  robins 
and  thrushes,  and  have  found  the  feathers  of  slaughtered  quail.  Once 
we  had  gray  rabbits  breeding  in  the  park,  and  their  number  reached 
between  eighty  and  ninety.  For  a  time  they  fearlessly  hopped  about  in 
sight  from  our  windows,  and  they  were  of  great  interest  to  visitors  and  to 
all  of  us.  Then  the  cats  began  upon  them;  and  in  one  year  there  was 
not  a  rabbit  to  be  seen,  save  at  rare  intervals.  At  the  same  time  the 
chipmunks  of  the  park  were  almost  exterminated. 

That  was  the  last  straw,  and  we  began  a  vigorous  war  upon  those 
wild  and  predatory  cats.  The  cats  came  off  second  best.  We  killed 
every  cat  that  was  found  hunting  in  the  park,  and  we  certainly  got  some 


UNSEEN    FOES  OF   WILD   LIFE  75 

that  were  big  and  bad.  We  eliminated  that  pest,  and  we  are  keeping 
it  eliminated.     And  with  what  result? 

In  1911  a  covey  of  eleven  quail  came  and  settled  in  our  grounds,  and 
have  remained  there.  Twenty  times  at  least  during  the  past  eight  months 
(winter  and  spring)  I  have  seen  the  flock  on  the  granite  ledge  not  more 
than  forty  feet  from  the  rear  window  of  my  office.  Last  spring  when  I 
left  the  Administration  Building  at  six  o'clock,  after  the  visitors  had 
gone,  I  found  two  half-grown  rabbits  calmly  roosting  on  the  door-mat. 
The  rabbits  are  slowly  coming  back,  and  the  chipmunks  are  visibly  in- 
creasing in  number.  The  gray  squirrels  now  chase  over  the  walks  without 
fear  of  any  living  thing,  and  our  ducklings  and  young  guineas  and  pea- 
cocks are  safe  once  more. 

That  cats  destroy  annually  in  the  United  States  several  millions  of 
very  valuable  birds,  seems  fairly  beyond  question.  I  believe  that  in 
settled  regions  they  are  worse  than  weasels,  foxes,  skunks  and  mink 
combined;  because  there  are  about  one  hundred  times  as  many  of  them, 
and  those  that  hunt  are  not  afraid  to  hunt  in  the  daytime.  Of  course  I 
am  not  saying  that  all  cats  hunt  wild  game;  but  in  the  country  I 
believe  that  fully  one-half  of  them  do. 

I  am  personally  acquainted  with  a  cat  in  Indiana,  on  the  farm  of 
relatives,  which  is  notorious  for  its  hunting  propensities,  and  its  remark- 
able ability  in  capturing  game.  Even  the  lady  who  is  joint  owner  of  the 
cat  feels  very  badly  about  its  destructiveness,  and  has  said,  over  and  over 
again,  that  it  ought  to  be  killed;  but  the  cat  is  such  a  family  pet  that  no 
one  in  the  family  has  the  heart  to  destroy  it,  and  as  yet  no  stranger  has 
come  forward  to  play  the  part  of  executioner.  The  lady  in  question 
assured  me  that  to  her  certain  knowledge  that  particular  cat  would  watch 
a  nestful  of  young  robins  week  after  week  until  they  had  grown  up  to 
such  a  size  that  they  were  almost  ready  to  fly;  then  he  would  kill  them 
and  devour  them.  Old  "Tommy"  was  too  wise  to  kill  the  robins  when 
they  were  unduly  small. 

In  a  great  book  entitled  Useful  Birds  and  Their  Protection,  by  E. 
H.  Forbush,  State  Ornithologist  of  Massachusetts,  and  published  by  the 
Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Agriculture  in  1905,  there  appears,  on 
page  362,  many  interesting  facts  on  this  subject.     For  example: 

Mr.  William  Brewster  tells  of  an  acquaintance  in  Maine,  who  said  that  his  cat 
killed  about  fifty  birds  a  year.  Mr.  A.  C.  Dike  wrote  [to  Mr.  Forbush]  of  a  cat  owned 
by  a  family,  and  well  cared  for.  They  watched  it  through  one  season,  and  found  that 
it  killed  fifty-eight  birds,  including  the  young  in  five  nests. 

Nearly  a  hundred  correspondents,  scattered  through  all  the  counties  of  the  state, 
report  the  cat  as  one  of  the  greatest  enemies  of  -birds.  The  reports  that  have  come  in 
of  the  torturing  and  killing  of  birds  by  cats  are  absolutely  sickening.  The  number  of 
birds  killed  by  them  in  this  state  is  appalling. 

Some  cat  lovers  believe  that  each  cat  kills  on  the  average  not  more  than  ten  birds 
a  year;  but  I  have  learned  of  two  instances  where  more  than  that  number  were  killed 
in  a  single  day,  and  another  where  seven  were  killed.  If  we  assume,  however,  that  the 
average  cat  on  the  farm  kills  but  ten  birds  per  year,  and  that  there  is  one  cat  to  each 
farm  in  Massachusetts,  we  have,  in  round  numbers,  seventy  thousand  cats,  killing 
seven  hundred  thousand  birds  annually. 


76 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


In  Mr.  Forbush's  book 
there  is  an  illustration  of 
the  cat  which  killed  fift}^- 
eight  birds  in  one  year, 
and  the  animal  was  photo- 
graphed with  a  dead  robin 
in  its  mouth.  The  portrait 
is  reproduced  in  this  chap- 
ter. 

Last  year,  a  strong  effort 
was  made  in  Massachusetts 
to  enact  a  law  requiring 
cats  to  be  licensed.  On  ac- 
count of  the  amount  of 
work  necessary  in  passing 
the  no-sale-of-game  bill, 
that  measure  was  not 
pressed,  and  so  it  did  not 
become  a  law ;  but  another 
year  it  will  undoubtedly  be 
passed,  for  it  is  a  good  bill, 
and  extremely  necessary  at 
this  time.  Such  a  law  is 
needed  in  every  state! 

There  is  a  mark  by  which 
you  may  instantly  and  in- 
fallibly know  the  worst  of 
the  wild  cats— by  their 
presence  away  from  home, 
hunting  in  the  open.  Kill  all 
such,  wherever  found.  The 
harmless  cats  are  domestic 

in  their  tastes,  and  stay  close  to  the  family  fireside  and  the  kitchen. 
Being  properly  fed,  they  have  no  temptation  to  become  hunters.  There 
are  cats  and  cats,  just  as  there  are  men  and  men:  some  tolerable,  many 
utterly  intolerable.  No  sweeping  sentiment  for  all  cats  should  be  allowed 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  abatement  of  the  hunting-cat  nuisances. 

Of  all  men,  the  farmer  cannot  afford  the  luxury  of  their  existence!  It  is 
too  expensive.  With  him  it  is  a  matter  of  dollars,  and  cash  out  of  pocket 
for  every  hunting  cat  that  he  tolerates  in  his  neighborhood.  There  are 
two  places  in  which  to  strike  the  hunting  cats :  in  the  open,  and  in  the 
state  legislature. 

While  this  chapter  was  in  the  hands  of  the  compositors,  the  hunting 
cat  and  gray  rabbit  shown  in  the  accompanying  illustration  were  brought 
in  by  a  keeper. 

Dogs  as  Destroyers  of  Birds. — I  have  received  many  letters  from 
protectors  of  wild  life  informing  me  that  the  destruction  of  ground-nesting 


A  HUNTING   CAT  AND  ITS  VICTIM 

This  Cat  had  fed  so  bountifully  on  the  Rabbits  and  Squirrels 

of  the  Zoological  Park,  that  it  ate  only  the  Brain 

of  this  Gray  Rabbit 


UNSEEN    FOES  OF    WILD    LIFE  77 

birds,  and  especially  of  upland  game  birds,  by  roaming  dogs,  has  in  some 
localities  become  a  great  curse  to  bird  life.  Complaints  of  this  kind  have 
come  from  New  York,  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  Pennsylvania  and  else- 
where.  Usually  the  culprits  are  hunting  dogs — setters,  pointers  and  hounds. 

Now,  surely  it  is  not  necessary  to  set  forth  here  any  argument  on 
this  subject.  It  is  not  open  to  argument,  or  academic  treatment  of  any 
kind.     The  cold  fact  is: 

In  the  breeding  season  of  birds,  and  while  the  young  birds  are  in- 
capable of  quick  and  strong  flight,  all  dogs,  of  every  description,  should 
be  restrained  from  free  hunting ;  and  all  dogs  found  hunting  in  the  woods 
during  the  season  referred  to  should  be  arrested,  and  their  owners  should 
be  fined  twenty  dollars  for  each  offense.  Incidentally,  one-half  the  fine 
should  go  to  the  citizen  who  arrests  the  dog.  The  method  of  restraining 
hunting  dogs  should  devolve  upon  dog  owners ;  and  the  law  need  only 
prohibit  or  punish  the  act. 

Beyond  a  doubt,  in  states  that  still  possess  quail  and  ruffed  grouse, 
free  hunting  by  hunting  dogs  leads  to  great  destruction  of  nests  and 
broods  during  the  breeding  season. 

Telegraph  and  Telephone  Wires. —  Mr.  Daniel  C.  Beard  has 
strongly  called  my  attention  to  the  slaughter  of  birds  by  telegraph 
wires  that  has  come  under  his  personal  observation.  His  country  home, 
at  Redding,  Connecticut,  is  near  the  main  line  of  the  New  York,  New 
Haven  and  Hartford  Railway,  along  which  a  line  of  very  large  poles 
carries  a  great  number  of  wires.  The  wires  are  so  numerous  that  they 
form  a  barrier  through  which  it  is  difficult  for  any  bird  to  fly  and  come 
out  alive  and  unhurt. 

Mr.  Beard  says  that  among  the  birds  killed  or  crippled  by  flying 
against  those  wires  near  Redding  he  has  seen  the  following  species :  olive- 
backed  thrush,  white-throated  sparrow  and  other  sparrows,  oriole,  blue 
jay,  rail,  ruffed  grouse,  and  woodcock.  It  is  a  common  practice  for 
employees  of  the  railwa3%  and  others  living  along  the  line,  to  follow  the 
line  and  pick  up  on  one  excursion  enough  birds  for  a  pot-pie. 

Beyond  question,  the  telegraph  and  telephone  wires  of  the  United 
States  annually  exact  a  heavy  toll  in  bird  life,  and  claim  countless  thou- 
sands of  victims.  They  may  well  be  set  down  as  one  of  the  un.seen 
forces  destructive  to  birds. 

Naturally,  we  ask,  what  can  be  done  about  it? 

I  am  told  that  in  Scotland  such  slaughter  is  prevented  by  the 
attachment  of  small  tags  or  discs  to  the  telephone  wires,  at  intervals 
of  a  few  rods,  sufficiently  near  that  they  attract  the  attention  of  flying 
birds,  and  reveal  the  line  of  an  obstruction  This  system  should  be 
adopted  in  all  regions  where  the  conditions  are  such  that  birds  kill  them- 
selves against  telegraph  wires,  and  an  excellent  place  to  begin  would  be 
along  the  line  of  the  N.  Y.,  N.  H.  &  H.  Railway.^, 

Wild  Animals. — Beyond  question,  it  is  both  desirable  and  necessary 
that  any  excess  of  wild  animals  that  prey  upon  our  grouse,  quail,  pheas- 


78  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

ants,  woodcock,  snipe,  mallard  duck,  shore  birds  and  other  species  that 
nest  on  the  ground,  should  be  killed.  Since  we  must  choose  between  the 
two,  the  birds  have  it !  Weasels  and  foxes  and  skunks  are  interesting,  and 
they  do  much  to  promote  the  hilarity  of  life  in  rural  districts,  but  they 
do  not  destroy  insects,  and  are  of  comparatively  little  value  as  destroyers 
of  the  noxious  rodents  that  prey  upon  farm  crops.  While  a  few  persons 
may  dispute  the  second  half  of  this  proposition,  the  burden  of  proof  that 
my  view  is  wrong  will  rest  upon  them ;  and  having  spent  eighteen  years 
"on  the  farm,"  I  think  I  am  right.  If  there  is  any  positive  evidence 
tending  to  prove  that  the  small  carnivores  that  we  class  as  "vermin" 
are  industrious  and  persistent  destroyers  of  noxious  rodents — pocket 
gophers,  moles,  field-mice  and  rats — or  that  they  do  not  kill  wild  birds 
numerously,  now  is  the  time  to  produce  it,  because  the  tide  of  public 
sentiment  is  strongly  setting  against  the  weasels,  mink,  foxes  and  skunks. 
(Once  upon  a  time,  a  shrewd  young  man  in  the  Zoological  Park  discovered 
a  weasel  hiding  behind  a  stone  while  devouring  a  sparrow  that  it  had 
just  caught  and  killed.  He  stalked  it  successfully,  seized  it  in  his  bare 
hand,  and,  even  though  bitten,  made  good  the  capture.) 

The  State  of  Pennsylvania  is  extensively  wooded,  with  forests  and 
with  brush  which  affords  excellent  home  quarters  and  breeding  grounds 
for  mammalian  "vermin."  The  small  predatory  mammals  are  so 
seriously  destructive  to  ruffed  grouse  and  other  ground  birds  that  the 
State  Game  Commission  is  greatly  concerned.  When  the  hunter's  license 
law  is  enacted,  as  it  very  surely  will  be  at  the  next  session  of  the  legis- 
lature (1913),  a  portion  of  the  $70,000  that  it  will  produce  each  year 
will  be  used  by  the  commission  in  paying  bounties  on  the  destruction 
of  the  surplus  of  vermin.  Through  the  pursuit  of  vermin,  any  farmer 
can  easily  win  enough  bounties  to  more  than  pay  the  cost  of  his  annual 
hunting  license  (one  dollar),  and  the  farmers'  boys  will  find  a  new  in- 
terest in  life. 

In  some  portions  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  region,  the  assaults  of  the 
large  predatory  mammals  and  birds  on  the  young  of  the  big-game  species 
occasionally  demand  special  treatment.  In  the  Yellowstone  Park  the 
pumas  multiplied  to  such  an  extent  and  killed  so  many  young  elk  that 
their  number  had  to  be  systematically  reduced.  To  that  end  "Buffalo" 
Jones  was  sent  out  by  the  Government  to  find  and  destroy  the  intolerable 
surplus  of  pumas.  In  the  course  of  his  campaign  he  killed  about  forty, 
much  to  the  benefit  of  the  elk  herds.  Around  the  entrance  to  the  den 
of  a  big  old  male  puma,  Mr.  Jones  found  the  skulls  and  other  remains 
of  nine  elk  calves  that  "the  old  Tom"  had  killed  and  carried  there. 

Pumas  and  lynxes  attack  and  kill  mountain  sheep;  and  the  golden 
eagle  is  very  partial  to  mountain  sheep  lambs  and  mountain  goat 
kids.  It  will  not  answer  to  permit  birds  of  that  bold  and  predatory 
species  to  become  too  numerous  in  mountains  inhabited  by  goats  and 
sheep ;  and  the  fewer^^l  mountain  lions  the  better,  for  they,  like  the 
lynx  and  eagle,  have TTothing  to  live  upon  save  the  game. 

The  wolves  and  coyotes  have  learned  to  seek  the  ranges  of  cattle. 


UNSEEN  FOES  OF   WILD   LIFE 


79 


horses  and  sheep, 
where  they  still  do 
immense  damage, 
chiefly  in  killing  young 
stock.  In  spite  of  the 
great  sums  that  have 
been  paid  out  by  west- 
ern states  in  bounties 
for  the  destruction  of 
wolves,  in  many,  many 
places  the  gray  wolf 
still  persists,  and  can 
not  be  exterminated. 
To  the  stockmen  of 
the  west  the  wolf  ques- 
tion is  a  serious  niat- 
ter.  The  stockmen  of 
Montana  say  that  a 
government  expert 
once  told  them  how  to 
get  rid  of  the  gray 
wolves.  His  instruc- 
tions were:  "Locate 
the  dens,  and  kill  the  young  in  the  dens,  soon  after  they  are  born!" 
"All  very  easy  to  say,  but  a  trifle  difficult  to  do!"  said  my  informant; 
and  the  ranchman  seem  to  think  they  are  yet  a  long  way  from  a  solution 
of  the  wolf  question. 

During  the  past  year  the  destruction  of  noxious  predatory  animals 
in  the  national  forest  reserves  has  seriously  occupied  the  attention  of  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Forestry.  By  the  foresters  of  that  bureau  the 
following  animals  were  destroyed  in  fifteen  western  states: 


THE  EASTERN   RED   SQUIRREL 
A  Great  Destroyer  of  Birds 


213  Bears 

88  Mountain  Lions 
172  Gray  Wolves 

69  Wolf  Pups 


6,487  Coyotes 
870  Wild-Cats 
72  Lynxes 

7,971 


In  1910  the  total  was  9,103. 
The  Red  Squirrel. — Once  in  a  great  while,  conditions  change  in 
subtle  ways,  wild  creatures  unexpectedly  increase  in  number,  and  a  com- 
munity awakens  to  the  fact  that  some  wild  species  has  become  a  public 
nuisance.  In  a  small  city  park,  even  gray  squirrels  niay  breed  and  be- 
come so  fearfully  numerous  that,  in  their  restless  quest  for  food,  they 
may  ravage  the  nests  of  the  wild  birds,  kill  and  devour  the  young,  and 
become  a  pest.  In  the  Zoological  Park,  in  1903,  we  found  that  the  red 
squirrels  had  increased  to  such  a  horde  that  th«y  were  driving  out  all 
our  nesting  wild  birds,  driving  out  the  gray  squirrels,  and  making  them- 
selves intolerably  obnoxious.  We  shot  sixty  of  them,  and  brought  the 
total  down  to  a  reasonable  number.     Wherever  he  is  or  whatever  his 


80 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


numerical  strength,  the  red 
squirrel  is  a  bad  citizen,  and, 
while  we  do  not  by  any 
means  favor  his  extermina- 
tion, he  should  resolutely  be 
kept  within  bounds  by  the 
rifle. 

When  a  crow  nested  in  our 
woods,  near  the  Beaver  Pond, 
we  were  greatly  pleased ;  but 
with  the  feeding  of  the  first 
brood,  the  crows  began  to 
carry  off  ducklings  from  the 
wild-fowl  pond.  After  one 
crow  had  been  seen  to  seize 
and  carry  away  five  young 
ducks  in  one  forenoon,  we 
decided  that  the  constitu- 
tional limit  had  beenreached, 
for  we  did  not  propose  that 
all  our  young  mallards  should 
be  swept  into  the  awful  vor- 
tex of  that  crow  nest.  We 
took  those  young  crows  and 
reared  them  by  hand;  but 
the  old  one  had  acquired  a 
bad  habit,  and  she  persisted 
in  carrying  off  young  ducks 
until  we  had  to  end  her  exis- 
tence with  a  gun.  It  was  a  painful  operation,  but  there  was  no  other 
way. 

Bird-Destroying  Birds. — There  are  several  species  of  birds  that 
may  at  once  be  put  under  sentence  of  death  for  their  destructiveness 
of  useful  birds,  without  any  extenuating  circumstances  worth  mention- 
ing. Four  of  these  are  Cooper's  Hawk,  the  Sharp-Shinned  Hawk,  Pigeon 
Hawk  and  Duck  Hawk.  Fortunately  these  species  are  not  so  numerous 
that  we  need  lose  any  sleep  over  them.  Indeed,  I  think  that  today  it 
would  be  a  mighty  good  collector  who  could  find  one  specimen  in  seven 
days'  hunting.  Like  all  ether  species,  these,  too,  are  being  shot  out  of 
of  our  bird  fauna. 

Several  species  of  bird-eating  birds  are  trembling  in  the  balance, 
and  under  grave  suspicion.  Some  of  them  are  the  Great  Horned  Owl, 
Barred  Owl,  Screech  Owl,  Butcher  Bird  or  Great  Northern  Shrike.  The 
only  circumstance  that  saves  these  birds  from  instant  condemnation  is 
the  delightful  amount  of  rats,  mice,  moles,  gophers  and  noxious  insects 
that  they  annually  consume.  In  view  of  the  awful  destructiveness  of 
the  accursed  bubonic-plague-carrying  rat,  we  are  impelled  to  think  long 
before  placing  in  our  killing  list  even  the  great  horned  owl,  who  really 


COOPER'S  HAWK 
A  Species  to  be  Destroyed 


UNSEEN    FOES  OF   WILD   LIFE 


81 


does  levy  a  heavy  tax  on  our 
upland  game  birds.  As  to  the 
butcher  bird,  we  feel  that  we 
ought  to  kill  him,  but  in  view 
of  his  record  on  wild  mice  and 
rats,  we  hesitate,  and  finally 
decline. 

Snakes. — Mr.  Thomas  M. 
Upp,  a  close  and  long  obser- 
ver of  wild  things  wishes  it 
distinctly  understood  that 
while  the  common  black- 
snakes  and  racers  are  prac- 
tically harmless  to  birds,  the 
Pilot  Black  -Snake, — long, 
thick  and  truculent, — is  a 
great  scourge  to  nesting  birds. 
It  seems  to  be  deserving  of 
death.  Mr.  Upp  speaks  from 
])ersonal  knowledge,  and  his 
condemnation  of  the  species 
referred  to  is  quite  sweeping. 
At  the  same  time  Mr.  Ray- 
mond L.  Ditmars  points  out 
the  fact  that  this  serpent  feeds 
during  6  months  of  the  year 

on  mice,  and  in  doing  so  renders  good  service.     In  the  vSouth  it  is  called 

the  "Mouse  Snake." 


SH.\RP-SIIINNED  HAWK 
A  Species  to  be  Destroyed 


Photo  by  A.  C  Dyke 

THE   CAT   THAT    KILLED   58  BIRDS    IN  ONE    YEAR 
From  Mr.  Forbush's  Book 


CHAPTER  rX 
THE  DESTRUCTION   OF  WILD   LIFE   BY  DISEASES 

Every  cause  that  has  the  effect  of  reducing  the  total  of  wild-life 
population  is  now  a  matter  of  importance  to  mankind.  The  violent 
and  universal  disturbance  of  the  balance  of  Natiu-e  that  already  has 
taken  place  throughout  the  temperate  and  frigid  zone  offers  not  only 
food  for  thought,  but  it  calls  for  vigorous  action. 

There  are  vast  sections  in  the  populous  centres  of  western  civiliza- 
tion where  the  destruction  of  species,  even  to  the  point  of  extermina- 
tion, is  fairly  inevitable.  It  is  the  way  of  Christian  man  to  destroy 
all  wild  life  that  comes  within  the  sphere  of  influence  of  his  iron  heel. 
With  the  exception  of  the  big  game,  this  destruction  is  largely  a  tem- 
peramental result,  peculiar  to  the  highest  civilization.  In  India  where 
the  same  fields  have  been  plowed  for  wheat  and  dahl  and  raggi  for  at 
least  2,000  years,  the  Indian  antelope,  or  "black  buck,"  the  saras  crane 
and  the  adjutant  stalk  through  the  crops,  and  the  nilgai  and  gazelle 
inhabit  the  eroded  ravines  in  an  agricultural  land  that  averages  1,200 
people  to  the  square  mile ! 

We  have  seen  that  even  in  farming  country,  where  mud  villages 
are  as  thick  as  farm  houses  in  Nebraska,  wild  animals  and  even  hoofed 
game  can  live  and  hold  their  own  through  hundreds  of  years  of  close 
association  with  man.  The  explanation  is  that  the  Hindus  regard  wild 
animals  as  creatures  entitled  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness, 
and  they  are  not  anxious  to  shoot  every  wild  animal  that  shows  its  head. 
In  the  United  States,  nearly  every  game-inhabited  community  is  ani- 
mated by  a  feeling  that  every  wild  animal  must  necessarily  be  killed 
as  soon  as  seen;  and  this  sentiment  often  leads  to  disgraceful  things. 
For  instance,  in  some  parts  of  New  England  a  deer  straying  into  a  town 
is  at  once  beset  by  the  hue  and  cry,  and  it  is  chased  and  assaulted  until 
it  is  dead,  by  violent  and  disgraceful  means.  New  York  State,  however, 
seems  to  have  outgrown  that  spirit.  During  the  past  ten  years,  at  least 
a  dozen  deer  in  distress  have  been  rescued  from  the  Hudson  River,  or 
in  inland  towns,  or  in  barnyards  in  the  suburbs  of  Yonkers  and  New 
York,  and  carefully  cared  for  until  "the  zoo  people"  could  be  communi- 
cated with.  Last  winter  about  13  exhausted  grebes  and  one  loon  were 
picked  up,  cared  for  and  finally  shipped  with  tender  care  to  the  Zoo- 
logical Park.  One  distressed  dovekie  was  picked  up,  but  failed  to  siir- 
vive. 

The  sentiment  for  the  conservation  of  wild  life  has  changed  the 
mental  attitude  of  very  many  people.      The  old  Chinese-Malay  spirit 


DESTRUCTION  BY  DISEASES  83 

which  cries  "Kill!  Kill!"  and  at  once  runs  amuck  among  suddenly 
discovered  wild  animals,  is  slowly  being  replaced  by  a  more  humane 
and  intelligent  sentiment.  This  is  one  of  the  hopeful  and  encourag- 
ing signs  of  the  times. 

The  destruction  of  wild  animals  by  natural  causes  is  an  interesting 
subject,  even  though  painful.  We  need  to  know  how  much  destruction 
is  wrought  by  influences  wholly  beyond  the  control  of  man,  and  a  few 
cases  must  be  cited. 

Rinderpest  in  Africa. — Probably  the  greatest  slaughter  ever 
wrought  upon  wild  animals  by  diseases  during  historic  times,  was  by 
rinderpest,  a  cattle  plague  which  afflicted  Africa  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  previous  century.  Originally,  the  disease  reached  Africa  by  way 
of  Egypt,  and  came  as  an  importation  from  Europe.  From  Egypt  it 
steadily  traveled  southward,  reaching  Somaliland  in  1889.  In  1896  it 
reached  the  Zambesi  River  and  entered  Rhodesia.  From  thence  it  went  on 
southward  almost  to  the  Cape.  Not  only  did  it  sweep  away  ninety  per- 
cent of  the  native  cattle  but  it  also  destroyed  more  than  seventy-five 
per  cent  of  the  buffalos,  antelopes  and  other  hoofed  game  of  Rhodesia. 
It  was  feared  that  many  species  would  be  completely  exterminated, 
but  happily  that  fear  was  not  realized.  The  buffalo  and  antelope  herds 
were  fifteen  years  in  breeding  up  again  to  a  reasonable  number,  but 
thanks  to  the  respite  from  hunters  which  they  enjoyed  for  several  years, 
finally  they  did  recover.  Throughout  British  East  Africa  the  supply  of 
big  game  in  1905  was  very  great,  but  since  that  time  it  has  been  very 
greatly  diminished  by  shooting. 

Caribou  Disease. — From  time  to  time  reports  have  come  from  the 
Province  of  Quebec,  and  I  think  from  Maine  and  New  Brunswick  also, 
of  many  caribou  having  died  of  disease.  The  nature  of  that  disease 
has  remained  a  mystery,  because  it  seems  that  no  pathologist  ever  has 
had  an  opportunity  to  investigate  it.  Fortunately,  however,  the  alleged 
disease  never  has  been  sufficiently  wide-spread  or  continuous  to  make 
appreciable  inroads  on  the  total  number  of  caribou,  and  apparently 
the  trouble  has  been  local. 

Scab  in  Mountain  Sheep. — "Scab"  is  a  contagious  and  persist- 
ent skin  disease  that  affects  sheep,  and  is  destructive  when  not  con- 
trolled. Fifteen  years  ago  it  prevailed  in  some  portions  of  the  west.  In 
Colorado  it  has  several  times  been  reported  that  many  bighorn  moun- 
tain"" sheep  were  killed  by  "scab,"  which  was  contracted  on  wild  moun- 
tain pastures  that  had  been  gone  over  by  domestic  sheep  carrying  that 
disease.  From  the  reports  current  at  that  time, we  inferred  that  about 
200  mountain  sheep  had  been  affected.  It  was  feared  that  the  disease 
would  spread  through  the  wild  flocks  and  become  general,  but  this  did 
not  occur,  It  seems  that  the  remnant  flocks  had  become  so  isolated 
from  one  another  that  the  isolation  of  the  affected  flocks  saved  the  others. 

Lumpy-Jaw  in  Antelope  and  Sheep. — It  is  a  lamentable  fact 
that  some,  at  least,  of  the  United  States  herds  of  prong-horned  antelope 
are  afflicted  with  a  very  deadly  chronic  infective  disease  known  as  actin- 


84  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

omycosis,  or  lumpy-jaw.  It  has  been  brought  into  the  Zoological 
Park  five  times,  by  specimens  shipped  from  Colorado,  Texas,  Wyoming 
and  Montana.     I  think  our  first  cases  came  to  us  in  1902. 

In  its  early  stage  this  disease  is  so  subtle  and  slow  that  it  is  months 
in  developing;  and  this  feature  renders  it  all  the  more  deadly,  through 
the  spread  of  infection  long  before  the  ailment  can  be  discovered. 

One  of  our  antelope  arrivals,  apparently  in  perfect  health  when 
received,  was  on  general  principles  kept  isolated  in  rigid  quarantine  for 
two  months.  At  the  expiration  of  that  period,  no  disease  of  any  kind 
having  become  manifest,  the  animal  was  placed  on  exhibition,  with 
two  others  that  had  been  in  the  Park  for  more  than  a  year,  in  perfect 
health. 

In  one  more  week  the  late  arrival  developed  a  swelling  on  its  jaw, 
drooled  at  the  corner  of  the  mouth,  and  became  feverish, — sure  symptoms 
of  the  dread  disease.  At  once  it  was  removed  and  isolated,  but  in  about 
lo  days  it  died.  The  other  two  antelopes  were  promptly  attacked,  and 
eventually  died. 

The  course  of  the  disease  is  very  intense,  and  thus  far  it  has  proven 
incurable  in  our  wild  animals.  We  have  lost  about  10  antelopes  from 
it,  and  one  deer,  usually,  in  each  case,  within  ten  days  or  two  weeks 
from  the  discovery  of  the  first  outward  sign, — the  well  known  swelling 
on  the  jaw.  One  case  that  was  detected  immediately  upon  arrival  was 
very  persistently  treated  by  Dr.  Blair,  and  the  animal  actually  survived 
for  four  months,  but  finally  it  succumbed.  From  first  to  last  not  a 
single  case  was  cured. 

In  1912,  the  future  of  the  prong-horned  antelope  in  real  captivity 
seems  hopeless.  We  have  decided  not  to  bring  any  more  specimens  to 
our  institution,  partly  because  all  available  candidates  seem  reasonably 
certain  to  be  afifected  with  lumpy-jaw,  and  partly  because  we  are  un- 
willing to  run  further  risks  of  having  other  hoofed  animals  inoculated 
by  them.  Today  we  are  anxiously  wondering  whether  the  jaw  disease 
of  the  prong-horn  is  destined  to  exterminate  the  species.  Such  a  catas- 
trophe is  much  to  be  feared.  This  is  probably  one  o^  the  reasons  why  the 
antelope  is  steadly  disappearing,  despite  protection. 

In  1906  we  discovered  the  existence  of  actinomycosis  among  the  black 
mountain  sheep  of  northern  British  Columbia.  Two  specimens  out  of 
six  were  badly  affected,  the  bones  of  the  jaws  being  greatly  enlarged, 
and  perforated  by  deep  pits.  The  black  sheep  of  the  Stickine  and  Is- 
koot  regions  are  so  seldom  seen  by  white  men,  save  when  a  sportsman 
kills  his  allotment  of  three  specimens,  we  really  do  not  know  anything 
about  the  extent  to  which  actinomycosis  prevails  in  those  herds,  or  how 
deadly  are  its  effects.  One  thing  seems  quite  certain,  from  the  appear- 
ance of  the  diseased  skulls  found  by  the  writer  in  the  taxidermic  labora- 
tory of  Frederick  Sauter,  in  New  York.  The  enormous  swelling  of  the 
diseased  jaw  bones  clearly  indicates  a  disease  that  in  some  cases  affects 
its  victim  throughout  many  months.  Such  a  condition  as  we  found  in 
those  sheep  could  not  have  been  reached  in  a  few  days  after  the  disease 


DESTRUCTION  BY   DISEASES  85 

became  apparent.  Now,  in  our  antelopes,  the  collapse  and  death  of 
the  victim  usually  occured  in  about  10  days  from  the  time  that  the 
first  swelling  was  observed:  which  means  a  very  virulent  disease,  and 
rapid  progress  at  the  climax.  The  jaw  of  one  of  our  antelopes,  which 
was  figured  in  Dr.  Blair's  paper  in  the  Eleventh  Annual  Report  of  the 
New  York  Zoological  Society  (1906)  shows  only  a  very  slight  lesion,  in 
comparison  with  those  of  the  mountain  sheep. 

The  conclusion  is  that  among  the  sheep,  this  disease  does  not  carry 
off  its  victims  in  any  short  period  like  10  days.  The  animal  must  survive 
for  some  months  after  it  becomes  apparent.  At  least  two  parties  of 
American  sportsmen  have  shot  rams  afflicted  with  this  disease,  but  I 
have  no  reports  of  any  sheep  having  been  found  dead  from  this  cause. 

This  disease  is  well  known  among  domestic  cattle,  but  so  far  as  we 
are  aware  it  never  before  has  been  found  among  wild  animals.  The  black 
sheep  herds  wherein  it  was  found  in  British  Columbia  are  absolutely 
isolated  from  domestic  cattle  and  all  their  influences,  and  therefore  it 
seems  quite  certain  that  the  disease  developed  among  the  sheep  spon- 
taneously,— a  remarkable  episode,  to  say  the  least.  Whether  it  will  ex- 
terminate the  black  mountain  sheep  species,  and  in  time  spread  to  the 
white  sheep  of  the  northwest,  is  of  course  a  matter  of  conjecture;  but 
there  is  nothing  in  the  world  to  prevent  a  calamity  of  that  kind.  The 
white  sheep  of  Yukon  Territory  range  southward  until  in  the  Sheslay 
Mountains  they  touch  the  sphere  of  influence  of  the  black  sheep,  where 
the  disease  could  easily  be  transmitted.  It  would  be  a  good  thing 
if  there  existed  between  the  two  species  a  sheepless  zone  about  200 
miles  wide. 

I  greatly  fear  that  actinomycosis  is  destined  to  play  an  important 
part  in  the  final  extinction  that  seems  to  be  the  impending  fate  of  the 
beautiful  and  valuable  prong-horned  antelope.  In  view  of  our  hard 
experiences,  extending  through  ten  years  (1902-1912),  I  think  this  fear 
is  justified.  All  persons  who  live  in  country  still  inhabited  by  antelope 
are  urged  to  watch  for  this  disease.  If  any  antelopes  are  found  dead, 
see  if  the  lower  jaw  is  badly  swollen  and  discharging  pus.  If  it  is,  bury 
the  body  quickly,  burn  the  ground  over,  and  advise  the  writer  regarding 
the  case. 

The  Rabbit  Plague. — One  of  the  strangest  freaks  of  Nature  of 
which  we  know  as  effecting  the  wholesale  destruction  of  wild  animals 
by  disease  is  the  rabbit  plague.  In  the  northern  wilderness,  and  par- 
ticularly central  Canada,  where  rabbits  exist  in  great  numbers  and 
supply  the  wants  of  a  large  carnivorous  population,  this  plague  is  well 
known,  and  among  trappers  and  woodsmen  is  a  common  topic  of  con- 
versation. The  best  treatment  of  the  subject  is  to  be  found  in  Ernest 
T.  Seton's  "Life  Histories  of  Northern  Animals",  Vol.  1,  p.  640  et  seq. 
From  this  I  quote : 

"Invariably  the  year  of  greatest  numbers  [of  rabbits ■  is  followed  by 
a  year  of  plague,  which  sweeps  them  away,  leaving  few  or  no  rabbits  in 
the  land.     The  denser  the  rabbit  population,  the  more  drastically  is  it 


86  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

ravaged  by  the  plague.  They  are  wiped  out  in  a  single  spring  by  epi- 
demic diseases  usually  characterized  by  swellings  of  the  throat,  sores 
under  the  armpits  and  groins,  and  by  diarrhea." 

"The  year  1885  was  for  the  country  around  Carberr}^  'a  rabbit  year.' 
the  greatest  ever  known  in  that  country.  The  number  of  rabbits  was 
incredible.  W.  R.  Hine  killed  75  in  two  hours,  and  estimated  that  he 
could  have  killed  5C0  in  a  day.  The  farmers  were  stricken  with  fear 
that  the  rabbit  pest  of  Australia  was  to  be  repeated  in  Manitoba.  But 
the  years  1886-7  changed  all  that.  The  rabbits  died  until  their  bodies 
dotted  the  country  in  thotisands.  The  plague  seemed  to  kill  all  the 
members  of  the  vast  host  of  1885." 

The  strangest  item  of  Mr.  Seton's  story  is  yet  to  be  told.  In  1890 
Mr.  Seton  stocked  his  park  at  Cos  Cob,  Conn.,  with  hares  and  rabbits 
from  several  widely  separated  locaHties.  In  1903,  the  plague  came  and 
swept  them  all  away.  Mr.  Seton  sent  specimens  to  the  Zoological  Park 
for  examination  by  the  Park  veterinary  surgeon.  Dr.  W.  Reid  Blair. 
They  were  found  to  be  infested  by  great  numbers  of  a  dangerous  blood- 
sucking parasite  known  as  Strongylus  strigosus,  which  produces  death  by 
anemia  and  emaciation.  There  were  hundreds  of  those  parasites  in  each 
animal.  I  assisted  in  the  examination,  and  was  shown  by  Dr.  Blair, 
under  the  microscope,  that  Strongylus  puts  forth  eggs  literally  by  hun- 
dreds of  thousands ! 

The  life  history  of  that  parasite  is  not  well  known,  but  it  may  easily 
develop  that  the  cycle  of  its  maximum  destructiveness  is  seven  years,  and 
therefore  it  may  be  accountable  for  the  seven-year  plague  among  the 
hares  and  rabbits  of  the  northern  United  States  and  Canada. 

Possibly  Strongylus  strigosus  is  all  that  stands  between  Canada 
and  a  pest  of  rabbits  like  that  of  Australia.  Just  why  this  parasite  is 
inoperative  in  AustraHa,  or  why  it  has  not  been  introduced  there  to 
lessen  the  rabbit  evil,  we  do  not  know.  Mr.  Seton  declares  that  the 
rabbits  of  his  park  were  "subject  to  all  the  ills  of  the  flesh,  except 
possibly  writer's  paralysis  and  housem. aid's  knee." 

Parasitic  Infection  of  Wild  Ducks. — The  diseases  of  wild  game, 
especially  waterfowl,  grouse  and  quail,  have  caused  heavy  losses  in 
America  as  well  as  in  European  countries,  and  scientists  have  been 
carefully  investigating  the  cause  and  the  general  nature  of  the  maladies, 
as  well  as  probable  methods  of  prevention  and  cure.  Mr.  Geo.  Atkinson, 
a  well-known  practical  naturaHst  of  Portage  la  Prairie,  Manitoba,  writes 
as  follows  to  a  local  paper  on  this  subject,  which  I  find  quoted  in  the 
National  Sportsman: 

The  •  question  which  has  developed  these  important  proportions  during  the  past 
year  is  that  of  the  extent  of  the  parasitic  infection  of  our  wild  ducks  and  other  game,  and 
the  possibiHties  of  the  extended  transmission  of  these  parasites  to  domestic  stock,  or 
even  humanity,  by  eating. 

The  parasites  in  question  are  contained  in  small  elliptical  cases  found  underlying 
the  surface  muscles  of  the  breast,  and  in  advanced  cases  extending  deeper  into  the 
flesh  and  the  muscular  tissues  of  the  legs  and  wings.  They  are  not  noticeable  in  the 
ordinary  process  of  plucking  the  bird  for  the  table,  and  are  not  found  internally,  so 


DESTRUCTION   BY   DISEASES  87 

that  the  only  method  of  discovering  tlieir  presence  is  by  slitting  the  skin  of  the  breast 
and  paring  it  back  a  few  inches  when  the  worm-like  sacs  will  be  seen  buried  in  the  flesh. 

These  parasites  have  come  to  my  notice  periodically  during  the  process  of  skin- 
ning birds  for  mounting  during  the  past  number  of  years,  but  it  was  only  when  they 
appeared  in  unusual  numbers  last  fall  that  I  made  inquiries  of  the  biological  bureaus 
of  Washington  and  Ottawa  for  information  of  their  life  history  and  the  possibilities  of 
their  transmission  to  other  hosts. 

Replies  from  these  sources  surprised  me  with  the  information  that  very  little  was 
known  of  the  life  history  of  any  of  the  Sarcosporidia,  of  which  group  this  was  a  species. 
Nothing  was  known  of  the  method  of  infection  or  the  transference  from  host  to  host  or 
species  to  species,  and  both  departments  asked  for  specimens  for  examination. 

Authorities  are  a  unit  in  opinion  that  the  question  is  one  of  great  importance  to 
game  conservation,  and  although  opinions  of  the  dangers  from  eating  differ  somewhat, 
a  record  is  given  of  a  hog  fed  upon  affected  flesh  developing  parasites  in  the  muscles 
in  six  weeks'  time,  while  a  case  of  a  man's  death  from  dropsy  was  found  to  be  the  result 
of  development  of  these  parasites  in  the  valves  of  the  heart. 

The  ability  of  these  low  forms  of  life  to  withstand  extremes  of  heat  makes  it 
necessary  for  more  than  ordinary  cooking  to  be  assured  of  killing  them,  and  since  their 
presence  is  unnoted  in  the  ordinary  course  of  dressing  the  birds  for  the  table,  there  is 
little  doubt  that  very  considerable  numbers  of  these  parasites  are  consumed  at  our 
tables  every  season,  with  results  at  present  unknown  to  us. 

The  species  I  have  found  most  particularly  infected  have  been  mallards,  shovellers, 
teal,  gadwall  and  pintails,  and  the  birds,  outwardly  in  the  best  condition,  have  fre- 
quently been  found  loaded  with  sacs  of  these  parasites  and  only  the  turning  back  of 
the  breast  skin  can  disclose  their  presence. 

The  greatest  slaughter  of  wild  ducks  by  disease  occured  on  Great 
Salt  Lake,  Utah.  Until  the  "duck  disease"  (intestinal  coccidiosis)  broke 
out  there,  in  the  summer  of  1910,  the  annual  market  slaughter  of  ducks 
at  the  mouth  of  Bear  River  had  been  enormous.  When  at  Salt  Lake 
City  in  1888  I  made  an  effort  to  arouse  the  sportsmen  whom  I  met  to 
the  necessity  of  a  reform,  btit  my  exhortations  fell  on  deaf  ears.  Natu- 
rally, the  sweeping  away  of  the  remaining  ducks  by  disease  would  suggest 
a  heaven-sent  judgment  upon  the  slaughterers  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that 
the  last  state  of  the  unfortunate  ducks  is  if  anything  worse  than  the  first. 

On  Oct.  17,  1911,  the  annual  report  of  the  chief  of  the  Biological  Sur- 
vey contained  the  following  information  on  this  subject : 

Epidemic  Among  Wild  Ducks  on  Great  Salt  Lake. — Following  a  long  dry  season, 
which  favored  the  rearing  of  a  large  number  of  wild  ducks,  but  materially  reduced  the 
area  of  the  feeding  ponds,  resulting  in  great  overcrowding,  a  severe  epidemic  broke  out 
about  August  1,  1910,  among  the  wild  ducks  about  Great  Salt  Lake,  Utah.  Dead 
ducks  could  be  counted  by  thousands  along  the  shores  and  the  disease  raged  unabated 
until  late  fall.  Shooting  clubs  found  it  necessary  to  declare  a  closed  season.  Some  of 
the  dead  ducks  were  forwarded  to  the  Biological  Survey  and  were  turned  over  for 
examination  to  the  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry,  by  the  experts  of  which  the  disease  was 
diagnosed  as  intestinal  coccidiosis. 

Various  plans  of  relieving  the  situation  were  tried.  The  irrigation  ditches  were 
closed,  thus  providing  the  sloughs  and  ponds  with  fresh  water,  and  lime  was  sprinkled 
on  the  mud  flats  and  duck  trails.  Great  improvement  followed  this  treatment,  and 
experiments  proved  that  ducks  provided  with  abundant  fresh  water  and  clean  food 
began  to  recover  immediately.  These  methods  promised  success,  but  later  it  was 
proposed  that  the  marshes  be  drained  and  exposed  to  the  sun's  rays — a  course  which 
cannot  be  recommended.  That  coccidia  are  not  always  killed  by  exposure  to  the  sun 
is  shown  by  their  survival  on  the  sites  of  old  chicken  yards.  An  added  disadvantage  of 
the  flan  is  that  draining  and  drying  the  marshes  would  have  a  bad  effect  on  the  natural 
duck  food,  and  upon  the  birds  themselves. 


CHAPTER  X 

DESTRUCTION   OF   WILD   LIFE   BY  THE   ELEMENTS 

It  is  a  fixed  condition  of  Nature  that  whenever  and  wherever  a  wild 
species  exists  in  a  state  of  nature,  free  from  the  trammels  and  limita- 
tions that  contact  with  man  always  imposes,  the  species  is  fitted  to 
survive  all  ordinary  climatic  influences.  Freedom  of  action,  and  the  ex- 
ercise of  several  options  in  the  line  of  individual  maintenance  under 
stress,  is  essential  to  the  welfare  of  every  wild  species. 

A  prong-horned  antelope  herd  that  is  free  can  drift  before  a  blizzard, 
can  keep  from  freezing  by  the  exercise,  and  eventually  come  to  shelter. 
Let  that  same  herd  drift  against  a  barbed-wire  fence  five  miles  long, 
and  its  whole  scheme  of  self-preservation  is  upset.  The  herd  perishes 
then  and  there. 

Cut  out  the  undergrowth  of  a  given  section,  drain  the  swamps  and 
mow  down  all  the  weeds  and  tall  grass,  and  the  next  particularly  hard 
winter  starves  and  freezes  the  quail. 

Naturally  the  cutting  of  forests,  clearing  of  brush  and  drainage  of 
marshes  is  more  or  less  calamitous  to  all  the  species  of  birds  that  inhabit 
such  places  and  find  there  winter  food  and  shelter.  Red-winged  black- 
birds and  real  estate  booms  can  not  inhabit  the  same  swamps  contem- 
poraneously. Before  the  relentless  march  of  civilization,  the  wild  In- 
dian, the  bison  and  many  of  the  wild  birds  must  inevitably  disappear. 
We  cannot  change  conditions  that  are  as  inexorable  as  death  itself. 
The  wild  life  must  either  adjust  itself  to  the  conditions  that  civilized 
man  imposes  upon  it,  or  perish.  I  say  "civilized  man,"  for  the  reason 
that  the  primitive  races  of  man  are  not  deadly  exterminators  of  species, 
as  we  are.  I  know  of  not  one  species  of  wild  life  that  has  been  extermi- 
nated by  savage  man  without  the  aid  of  his  civilized  peers. 

As  civilization  marches  ever  onward,  over  the  prairies,  into  the  bad 
lands  and  the  forests,  over  the  mountains  and  even  into  the  farthest 
corner  of  Death  Valley,  the  desert  of  deserts,  the  struggle  of  the  wild 
birds,  mammals  and  fishes  is  daily  and  hourly  intensified.  Man  must 
help  them  to  maintain  themselves,  or  accept  a  lifeless  continent.  The 
best  help  consists  in  letting  the  wild  creatures  throughly  alone,  so  that 
they  can  help  themselves;  but  quail  often  need  to  be  fed  in  critical 
periods.  The  best  food  is  wheat  screenings  placed  under  little  tents 
of  straw,  bringing  food  and  shelter  together. 

In  the  well  settled  portions  of  the  United  States,  such  species  as  quail, 
ruffed  grouse,  wild  turkey,  pinnated  grouse  and  sage  grouse  hang  to  life 


DESTRUCTION  BY   THE   ELEMENTS  89 

by  slender  threads.  A  winter  of  exceptionally  deep  snows,  much  sleet, 
and  a  late  spring  always  causes  grave  anxiety  among  the  state  game 
wardens.  In  Pennsylvania  a  very  earnest  movement  is  in  progress  to 
educate  and  persuade  farmers  to  feed  the  quail  in  winter,  and  much 
good  is  being  done  in  that  direction. 

Mr.  Erasmus  Wilson,  of  the  Pittsburgh  Gazette-Times  is  the  apos- 
tle of  that  movement. 

Quail  should  he  fed  every  winter,  in  every  northern  state.  The  methods 
to  be  pursued  will  be  mentioned  elsewhere. 

By  way  of  illustration,  here  is  a  sample  game  report,  from  Las  Ani- 
mas, Colorado,  Feb.  22,  1912: 

"After  the  most  severe  winter  weather  experienced  for  twenty  years 
we  are  able  to  compute  approximately  our  loss  of  feathered  life.  It  is 
seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  quail  throughout  the  irrigated  district, 
and  about  twenty  per  cent  of  meadow-larks.  In  the  rough  cedar-covered 
sections  south  of  the  Arkansas  River,  the  loss  among  the  quail  was 
much  lighter.  The  ground  sparrows  suffered  severely,  while  the  English 
sparrow  seems  to  have  come  through  in  good  shape.  Many  cotton-tail 
rabbits  starved  to  death,  while  the  deep,  light  snow  of  January  made 
them  easy  prey  for  hawks  and  coyotes."     (F.  T.  Webber). 

It  would  be  possible  to  record  many  instances  similar  to  the  above, 
but  why  multiply  them  ?    And  now  behold  the  cruel  corollary : 

At  least  twenty-five  times  during  the  past  two  years  I  have  heard 
and  read  arguments  by  sportsmen  against  my  proposal  for  a  5-year  close 
season  for  quail,  taking  the  ground  that  "The  sportsmen  are  not  wholly 
toblamefor  the  scarcity  of  quail.    It  is  the  cold  winters  that  kill  them  off!'' 

So  then,  because  the  fierce  winters  murder  the  boh  white,  wholesale, 
they  should  not  have  a  chance  to  recover  themselves!  Could  human  beings 
possibly  assume  a  more  absurd  attitude? 

Yes,  it  is  coldly  and  incontestably  true,  that  even  after  such  winter 
slaughter  as  Mr.  Webber  has  reported  above,  the  very  next  season  will 
find  the  quail  hunter  joyously  taking  the  field,  his  face  beaming  with 
health  and  good  living,  to  hunt  down  and  shoot  to  death  as  many  as 
possible  of  the  pitiful  25  per  cent  remnant  that  managed  to  survive  the 
pitiless  winter.  How  many  quail  hunters,  think  you,  ever  stayed  their 
hands  because  of  "a  hard  winter  on  the  quail?"  I  warrant  not  one  out 
of  every  hundred!  How  many  states  in  this  Union  ever  put  on  a  close 
season  because  of  a  hard  winter?  I'll  warrant  that  not  one  ever  did; 
and  I  think  there  is  only  one  state  whose  game  commissioners  have  the 
power  to  act  in  that  way  without  recourse  to  the  legislature.  This  situa- 
tion is  intolerable. 

Thanks  to  the  splendid  codified  game  laws  enacted  in  New  York 
state  in  1912,  our  Conservation  Commission  can  declare  a  close  season 
in  any  locality,  for  any  length  of  time,  when  the  state  of  the  game  de- 
mands an  emergency  measure.  This  act  is  as  follows;  and  it  is  a  model 
law,  which  every  other  state  should  speedily  enact : 


90  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

THE  NEW  YORK  CLOSE-SEASON  LAW. 

152.  Petition  for  additional  protection;  notice  of  hearings;  power  to  grant  additional 
protection;  notice  of  prohibition  or  regtuation;  penalties. 

1.  Petition  for  additional  protection.  Any  citizen  of  the  state  may  file  with  the 
commission  a  petition  in  writing  requesting  it  to  give  any  species  of  hsh,  other  than 
migratory  food  fish  of  the  sea,  or  game  protected  by  law,  additional  or  other  protection 
than  that  afforded  by  the  provisions  of  this  article.  Such  petition  shall  state  the 
grounds  upon  which  such  protection  is  considered  necessary,  and  shall  be  signed  by 
the  petitioner  with  his  address. 

2.  Notice  of  hearings.  The  commission  shall  hold  a  public  hearing  in  the  locality 
or  county  to  be  affected  upon  the  allegations  of  such  petition  within  twenty  days  from 
the  filing  thereof.  At  least  ten  days  prior  to  such  hearing  notice  thereof,  stating  the 
time  and  place  at  which  such  hearing  shall  be  held,  shall  be  advertised  in  a  newspaper 
published  in  the  county  to  be  affected  by  such  additional  or  other  protection.  Such 
notice  shall  state  the  name  and  the  address  of  the  petitioner,  together  with  a  brief  state- 
ment of  the  grounds  upon  which  such  application  is  made,  and  a  copy  thereof  shall  be 
mailed  to  the  petitioner  at  the  address  given  in  such  petition  at  least  ten  days  before 
such  hearing. 

J.  Power  to  grant  additional  protection.  If  upon  such  hearing  the  commission  shall 
determine  that  such  species  of  fish  or  game,  by  reason  of  disease,  danger  of  extermina- 
tion, or  from  any  other  cause  or  reason,  requires  such  additional  or  other  protection,  in 
any  locality  or  throughout  the  state,  the  commission  shall  have  power  to  prohibit  or 
regulate,  during  the  open  season  therefor,  the  taking  of  such  species  of  fish  or  game. 
Such  prohibition  or  regulation  may  be  made  general  throughout  the  state  or  confined 
to  a  particular  part  or  district  thereof. 

4.  Notice  of  prohibition  or  regulation.  Any  order  made  by  the  commission  under 
the  provisions  of  this  section  shall  be  signed  by  it,  and  entered  in  its  minute  book.  At 
least  thirty  days  before  such  prohibition  or  regulation  shall  take  effect,  copies  of  the 
same  shall  be  filed  in  the  office  of  the  clerk  issuing  hunting  and  trapping  licenses  for 
the  district  to  which  the  prohibition  or  regulation  applies.  It  shall  be  the  duty  of  said 
clerks  to  issue  a  copy  of  said  prohibition  or  regulation  to  each  person  to  whom  a  hunting 
or  trapping  license  is  issued  by  them ;  to  mail  a  copy  of  such  prohibition  or  regulation 
to  each  holder  of  a  hunting  and  trapping  license  theretofore  issued  by  them  and  at 
that  time  in  effect,  and  to  post  a  copy  thereof  in  a  conspicuous  place  in  their  office. 
At  least  thirty  days  before  such  prohibition  or  regulation  shall  take  effect  the  com- 
mission shall  cause  a  notice  thereof  to  be  advertised  in  a  newspaper  published  in  the 
county  wherein  such  prohibition  or  regulation  shall  take  effect. 

5.  Penalties.  Any  person  violating  the  provisions  of  such  prohibition,  rule  or  regu- 
lation shall  be  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor  and  shall,  upon  conviction,  be  subject  to  a  fine 
of  not  to  exceed  one  hundred  dollars,  or  shall  be  imprisoned  for  not  more  than  thirty 
days,  or  both,  for  each  offense,  in  addition  to  the  penalties  hereinafter  provided  for 
taking  fish,  birds  or  quadrupeds  in  the  close  season. 

I  want  all  sensible,  honest  sportsmen  to  stop  citing  the  killing  of 
game  birds  by  severe  winters  as  a  reason  why  long  close  seasons  are  not 
necessary,  and  why  automatic  guns  "don't  matter."  And  I  want  sports- 
men to  consider  their  duty,  and  not  go  out  hunting  any  game  species 
that  has  been  slaughtered  by  a  hard  winter,  until  it  has  had  at  least  five 
years  in  which  to  recover.  Any  other  course  is  cruel,  selfish,  and  short- 
sighted; and  a  word  to  the  humane  should  be  sufficient. 

The  worst  exhibitions  ever  made  of  the  wolfish  instinct  to  slay  that 
springs  eternal  in  some  human  (!)  breasts  are  those  brought  about  through 
the  distress  or  errors  of  wild  animals.  By  way  of  illustration,  consider 
the  slaughter  of  half-starved  elk  that  took  place  in  the  edge  of  Idaho  in 
the  winter  of  1909  and   1910,  when  about  seven  hundred  elk  that  were 


DESTRUCTION   BY    THE    ELEMENTS  91 

driven  out  of  the  Yellowstone  Park  at  its  northwestern  corner  by  the 
deep  snow,  fled  into  Idaho  in  the  hope  of  finding  food.  The  inhabitants 
met  the  starving  herds  with  repeating  rifles,  and  as  the  unfortunate 
animals  struggled  westward  through  the  snow  and  storm,  they  were 
slaughtered  without  mercy.  Bulls  and  cows,  old  and  young,  all  of  the 
seven  hundred,  went  down;  and  Stoney  Indians  could  not  have  acted 
any  worse  than  did  those  "settlers." 

On  another  occasion,  it  is  recorded  that  the  prong-horned  antelope 
herd  of  the  Mammoth  Hot  Springs  wandered  across  the  line  into  Gar- 
diner, and  quickly  met  a  savage  attack  of  gunners  with  rifles.  A  number 
of  those  rare  and  valuable  animals  were  killed,  and  others  fled  back  into 
the  Park  with  broken  legs  dangling  in  the  air. 

In  the  interest  of  public  decency,  and  for  the  protection  of  the  repu- 
tation of  American  citizenship,  one  of  two  things  should  be  done. 
The  northern  boundary  of  the  Park  should  be  extended  northward  be- 
yond Gardiner,  or  else  the  deathtrap  should  be  moved  elsewhere.  The 
case  of  the  town  of  Gardiner  is  referred  to  the  legislature  of  Montana 
for  treatment. 

Beyond  question,  the  highest  sentiments  of  humanity  are  those  that 
are  stirred  by  the  misfortunes  of  killable  game.  During  the  past  thirty 
years,  I  have  noticed  some  interesting  m.anifestations  of  the  increased 
s^^mpathy  for  wild  creatures  that  steadily  is  growing  in  a  large  section 
of  the  public  niind.  Thirt}^  years  ago,  the  appearance  of  a  deer  or  moose 
in  the  streets  of  any  eastern  village  nearly  always  was  in  itself  a  signal 
for  a  grand  chase  of  the  unfortunate  creature,  and  its  speedy  slaughter. 
Today,  in  the  eastern  states,  the  general  feeling  is  quite  different.  The 
appearance  of  a  deer  in  the  Hudson  River  itself,  or  a  moose  in  a  Maine 
village  is  a  signal,  not  for  a  wild  chase  and  cruel  slaughter,  but  for  a 
general  effort  to  save  the  animal  from  being  hurt,  or  killed.  I  know 
this  through  ocular  proof,  at  least  half  a  dozen  lost  and  bewildered  deer 
having  been  carefully  driven  into  yards,  or  barns,  and  humanely  kept 
and  cared  for  until  they  could  be  shipped  to  us.  Several  have  been 
caught  while  swimming  in  the  Hudson,  bewildered  and  panic-stricken. 
The  latest  capture  occurred  in  New  York  City  itself. 

A  puma  that  escaped  (about  1902)  from  the  Zoological  Park,  instead 
of  being  shot  was  captured  by  sensible  people  in  the  hamlet  of  Bronx- 
dale,  alive  and  unhurt,  and  safely  returned  to  us. 

In  some  portions  of  the  east,  though  not  all,  the  day  of  the  hue  and 
cry  over  "a  wild  animal  in  town"  seems  to  be  about  over.  On  Long 
Island  some  humane  persons  found  an  injured  turkey  vulture,  and  took  it 
in  and  cared  for  it, — only  to  be  persecuted  by  ill-advised  game  wardens, 
because  they  had  a  forbidden  wild  bird  "in  their  possession!"  There 
are  times  when  it  is  the  highest  (moral)  duty  of  a  game  warden  to  follow 
the  advice  of  Private  Mulvaney  to  the  "orficer  boy,"  and  "Shut  j'cr  oye 
to  the  rigulations,  sorr!" 

Such  occurrences  as  these  are  becoming  more  and  more  common. 
The  desire  of  "the  great  silent  majority"  is  to  SAVE  the  wild  creatures; 


92  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

and  it  is  in  response  to  that  sentiment  that  thousands  of  people  are  to- 
day in  the  field  against  the  Army  of  Destruction. 

It  is  the  duty  of  every  sportsman  to  assist  in  promoting  the  passage 
of  a  law  like  our  New  York  law  which  empowers  the  State  Game  Com- 
mission to  throw  extra  protection  around  any  species  that  has  been 
slaughtered  too  much  by  snow  or  by  firearms,  by  closing  the  open  sea- 
son as  long  as  may  be  necessary.  Can  there  be  in  all  America  even  one 
thinking,  reasoning  being  who  can  not  see  the  justice  and  also  the  im- 
perative necessity  of  this  measure  ?    It  seems  impossible. 

Give  the  game  the  benefit  of  every  doubt !  If  it  becomes  too  thick, 
your  gun  can  quickly  thin  it  out ;  but  if  it  is  once  exterminated,  it  will 
be  impossible  to  bring  it  back.  Be  wise;  and  take  thought  for  the  mor- 
row.   Remember  the  heath  hen. 

Slaughter  of  Bluebirds. — In  the  late  winter  and  early  spring  of 
1896  the  wave  of  bluebirds  was  caught  on  its  northward  migration  by 
a  period  of  unseasonably  cold  and  fearfully  tempestuous  weather,  in- 
volving much  icy-cold  rain  and  sleet.  Now,  there  is  no  other  climatic 
condition  that  is  so  hard  for  a  wild  bird  or  mammal  to  withstand  as  rain 
at  the  freezing  point,  and  a  mantle  of  ice  or  frozen  snow  over  all  supplies 
of  food. 

The  bluebirds  perished  by  thousands.  The  loss  occured  practically 
all  along  their  east-and-west  line  of  migration,  from  Arkansas  to  the 
Atlantic  Coast.  In  places  the  species  seemed  almost  exterminated;  and 
it  was  several  years  ere  it  recovered  to  a  point  even  faintly  approximat- 
ing its  original  population.  I  am  quite  certain  that  the  species  never 
has  recovered  more  than  50  per  cent  of  the  number  that  existed  previous 
to  the  calamity. 

Duck  Cholera  in  the  Bronx  River. — In  1911,  some  unknown 
but  new  and  particularly  deadly  element,  probably  introduced  in  sewage, 
contaminated  the  waters  of  Bronx  River  where  it  flows  through  New 
York  City,  with  results  very  fatal  in  the  Zoological  Park.  The  large 
flock  of  mallard  ducks,  Canada  geese,  and  snow  geese  on  Lake 
Agassiz  was  completely  wiped  out.  In  all  about  125  waterfowl  died 
in  rapid  sucession,  from  causes  commonly  classed  under  the  popular 
name  of  "duck  cholera."  The  disease  was  carried  to  other  bodies  of 
water  in  the  Park  that  were  fed  from  other  sources,  but  made  no  head- 
way elsewhere  than  on  lakes  fed  by  the  polluted  Bronx  River. 

Fortunately  the  work  of  the  Bronx  River  Parkway  Commission  soon 
will  terminate  the  present  very    unsanitary  condition  of   that  stream. 

Wild  Ducks  in  Distress. — In  the  winter  of  1911-12,  many  flocks 
of  wild  ducks  decided  to  winter  in  the  North.  Many  persons  believe 
that  this  was  largely  due  to  the  prevention  of  late  winter  and  spring 
shooting;  which  seems  reasonable.  Unfortunately  the  winter  referred 
to  proved  exceptionally  severe  and  formed  vast  sheets  of  thick  ice  over 
the  feeding-grounds  where  the  ducks  had  expected  to  obtain  their  food. 
On  Cayuga,  Seneca  and  other  lakes  in  central  New  York,  and  on  the 
island  of  Martha's  Vineyard,  the  flocks  of  ducks  suffered  very  severely, 


DESTRUCTION   BY   THE   ELEMENTS  93 

and  many  perished  of  hunger  and  cold.  But  for  the  laws  prohibiting  late 
winter  shooting  undoubtedly  all  of  them  would  have  been  shot  and  eaten,  re- 
gardless of  their  distress. 

Game  wardens  and  humane  citizens  made  numerous  efforts  to  feed 
the  starving  flocks,  and  many  ducks  were  saved  in  that  way.  An  illus- 
trated article  on  the  distressed  ducks  of  Keuka  Lake,  by  C.  William 
Beebe  and  Verdi  Burtch,  appeared  in  the  Zoological  Society  Bulletin 
for  May,  1912.  Fortunately  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  such 
occurrences  will  be  rare. 

Wild  Swans  Swept  Over  Niagara  Falls. — During  the  past  ten 
vears,  several  winter  tragedies  to  birds  have  occurred  on  a  large  scale 
at  Niagara  Falls.  Whole  flocks  of  whistling  swans  of  from  20  up  to  70 
individuals  alighting  in  the  Niagara  River  above  the  rapids  have  permit- 
ted themselves  to  float  down  into  the  rapids,  and  be  swept  over  the  Falls, 
en  masse.  On  each  occasion,  the  great  majority  of  the  birds  were 
drowned,  or  killed  on  the  rocks.  Of  the  very  few  that  survived,  few  if 
any  were  able  to  rise  and  fly  out  of  the  gorge  below  the  Falls  to  safety. 
It  is  my  impression  that  about  200  swans  recently  have  perished  in 
this  strange  way. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SLAUGHTER  OF  SONG-BIRDS  BY  ITALIANS 

In  these  days  of  wild-life  slaughter,  we  hear  much  of  death  and  de- 
struction. Before  our  eyes  there  continually  arise  photographs  of  hang- 
ing masses  of  waterfowl,  grouse,  pheasants,  deer  and  fish,  usually  sup- 
ported in  true  heraldic  fashion  by  the  men  who  slew  them  and  the  im- 
plements of  slaughter.  The  world  has  become  somewhat  hardened  to 
these  things,  because  the  victims  are  classed  as  game;  and  in  the  de- 
struction of  game,  one  game-bag  more  or  less  "Will  not  count  in  the 
news  of  the  battle." 

The  slaughter  of  song,  insectivorous  and  all  other  birds  by  Italians 
and  other  aliens  from  southern  Europe  has  become  a  scourge  to  the  bird 
life  of  this  country.  The  devilish  work  of  the  negroes  and  poor  whites 
of  the  South  will  be  considered  in  the  next  chapter.  In  Italy,  linnets  and 
sparrows  are  "game";  and  so  is  everything  else  that  wears  feathers! 
Italy  is  a  continuous  slaughtering-ground  for  the  migratory  birds  of 
Europe,  and  as  such  it  is  an  international  nuisance  and  a  pest.  The  way 
passerine  birds  are  killed  and  eaten  in  that  country  is  a  disgrace  to  the 
government  of  Italy,  and  a  standing  reproach  to  the  throne.  Even  kings 
and  parliaments  have  no  right  in  moral  or  international  law  to  permit 
year  after  year  the  wholesale  slaughter  of  birds  of  passage  of  species 
that  no  civilized  man  has  a  right  to  kill. 

There  are  some  tales  of  slaughter  from  which  every  properly-balanced 
Christian  mind  is  bound  to  recoil  with  horror.  One  such  tale  has  recently 
been  given  to  us  in  the  pages  of  the  Avicultural  Magazine,  of  London, 
for  January,  1912,  by  Mr.  Hubert  D.  Astley,  F.  Z.  S.,  whose  word  no 
man  will  dispute.     In  condensing  it,  let  us  call  it 

'The  Italian  Slaughter  of  the  Innocents 

This  story  does  not  concern  game  birds  of  any  kind.  Quite  the  con- 
trary. That  it  should  be  published  in  America,  a  land  now  rapidly  fill- 
ing up  with  Italians,  is  a  painful  necessity  in  order  that  the  people  of 
America  may  be  enabled  accurately  to  measure  the  fatherland  traditions 
and  the  fixed  mental  attitude  of  Italians  generally  toward  our  song  birds. 
I  shall  now  hold  a  mirror  up  to  Italian  nature.  If  the  image  is  either 
hideous  or  grotesque,  the  fault  will  not  be  mine.  I  specially  commend 
the  picture  to  the  notice  of  American  game  wardens  and  judges  on  the 
bench. 

The  American  reader  must  be  reminded  that  the  Italian  peninsula 
reaches  out  a  long  arm  of  land  into  the  Mediterranean  Sea  for  several 


96  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

hundred  miles  toward  the  sunny  Barbary  coast  of  North  Africa.  This 
great  southward  highway  has  been  chosen  by  the  birds  of  central  Europe 
as  their  favorite  migration  route.  Especially  is  this  true  of  the  small 
song-birds  with  weak  wings  and  a  minimum  of  power  for  long-sustained 
flight.  Naturally,  they  follow  the  peninsula  down  to  the  Italian  Land's 
End  before  they  launch  forth  to  dare  the  passage  of  the  Mediterranean. 

Italy  is  the  narrow  end  of  a  great  continental  funnel,  into  the  wide 
northern  end  of  which  Germany,  Austria,  France  and  Switzerland  an- 
nually pour  their  volume  of  migratory  bird  life.  And  what  is  the  result  ? 
For  answer  let  us  take  the  testimony  of  two  reliable  witnesses,  and  file 
it  for  use  on  the  day  when  Tony  Macchewin,  gun  in  hand  and  pockets 
bulging  with  cartridges,  goes  afield  in  our  country  and  opens  fire  on  our 
birds. 

The  linnet  is  one  of  the  sweet  singers  of  Europe.  It  is  a  small,  deli- 
cately formed,  weak-winged  little  bird,  about  the  size  of  our  phoebe- 
bird.  It  weighs  only  a  trifle  more  than  a  girl's  love-letter.  Where  it 
breeds  and  rears  its  young,  in  Germany  for  example,  a  true  sportsman 
would  no  more  think  of  shooting  a  linnet  than  he  would  of  killing  and 
eating  his  daughter's  dearest  canary. 

To  the  migrating  bird,  the  approach  to  northern  Italy,  either  going 
or  returning,  is  not  through  a  land  of  plenty.  The  sheltering  forests 
have  mostly  been  swept  away,  and  safe  shelters  for  small  birds  are  very 
rare.  In  the  open,  there  are  owls  and  hawks;  and  the  only  refuge  from 
either  is  the  thick-leafed  grove,  into  which  linnets  and  pipits  can  dive  at 
the  approach  of  danger  and  quickly  hide. 

A  linnet  from  the  North  after  days  of  dangerous  travel  finally 
reached  Lake  Como,  southward  bound.  The  country  was  much  too 
open  for  safety,  and  its  first  impulse  was  to  look  about  for  safe  shelter. 
The  low  bushes  that  sparsely  covered  the  steep  hillsides  were  too  thin 
for  refuge  in  times  of  sudden  danger. 

Ah!  Upon  a  hilltop  is  a  little  grove  of  trees,  green  and  inviting.  In 
the  grove  a  bird  is  calling,  calling,  insistently.  The  trees  are  very  small ; 
but  they  seem  to  stand  thickly  together,  and  their  foliage  should  afford 
a  haven  from  both  hawk  and  gunner.  To  it  joyously  flits  the  tired  lin- 
net. As  it  perches  aloft  upon  a  convenient  whip-like  wand,  it  notices 
for  the  first  time  a  queer,  square  brick  tower  of  small  dimensions,  rising 
in  the  center  of  a  court-yard  surrounded  by  trees.  The  tower  is  like 
an  old  and  dingy  turret  that  has  been  shorn  from  a  castle,  and  set  on  the 
hilltop  without  apparent  reason.  It  is  two  stories  in  height,  with  one 
window,  dingy  and  uninviting.    A  door  opens  into  its  base. 

Several  birds  that  seem  very  near,  but  are  invisible,  frequently 
call  and  chirp,  as  if  seeking  answering  calls  and  companionship.  Surely 
the  grove  must  be  a  safe  place  for  birds,  or  they  would  not  be  here. 

Hark!  A  whirring,  whistling  sound  fills  the  air,  like  the  air  tone  of 
a  flying  hawk's  wings.    A  hawk!    A  hawk! 

Down  plunges  the  scared  linnet,  blindly,  frantically,  into  the  space 
sheltered  by  the  grove ! 


SLAUGHTER   BY  ITALIANS  97 

Horrors !    What  is  this  ? 

Threads!  Invisible,  interlacing  threads;  tangled  and  full  of  pockets, 
treacherously  spanning  the  open  space.  It  is  a  fowler's  net !  The  linnet 
is  entangled.  It  flutters  frantically  but  helplessly,  and  hangs  there, 
caught.  Its  alarm  cry  is  frantically  answered  by  the  two  strange,  invis- 
ible bird  voices  that  come  from  the  top  of  the  tower ! 

The  grove  and  the  tower  are  A  ROCCOLO!  A  huge,  permanent, 
merciless,  deadly  trap,  for  the  wholesale  capture  of  songbirds !  The  tower 
is  the  hiding  place  of  the  fowler,  and  the  calling  birds  are  decoy  birds 
whose  eyes  have  been  totally  blinded  by  red-hot  wires  in  order  that  they 
will  call  more  frantically  than  birds  with  eyes  would  do.  Tlie  whistling 
wings  that  seemed  a  hawk  were  a  sham,  made  by  a  racquet  thrown 
through  the  air  by  the  fowler,  through  a  slot  in  his  tower.  He  keeps  by 
him  many  such  racquets. 

The  door  of  the  tower  opens,  and  out  comes  the  fowler.  He  is  low- 
browed, swarthy,  ill  kept,  and  wears  rings  in  his  ears.  A  soiled  hand 
seizes  the  struggling  linnet,  and  drags  it  violently  from  the  threads  that 
entangled  it.  A  sharp-pointed  twig  is  thrust  straight  through  the  head 
of  the  helpless  victim  at  the  eyes,  and  after  one  wild,  fluttering  agony — it 
is  dead. 

The  fowler  sighs  contentedly,  re-enters  his  dirty  and  foul-smelling 
tower,  tosses  the  feathered  atom  upon  the  pile  of  dead  birds  that  lies 
upon  the  dirty  floor  in  a  dirty  corner, — and  is  ready  for  the  next  one. 

Ask  him,  as  did  Mr.  Astley,  and  he  will  tell  you  frankly  that  there 
are  about  150  dead  birds  in  the  pile, — starlings,  sparrows,  linnets, 
greenfinches,  chaffinches,  goldfinches,  hawfinches,  redstarts,  blackcaps, 
robins,  song  thrushes,  blackbirds,  blue  and  coal  tits,  fieldfares  and  red- 
wings. He  will  tell  you  also,  that  there  are  seven  other  roccolos  within  sight 
and  twelve  within  easy  walking  distance.  He  will  tell  you,  as  he  did  Mr. 
Astley,  that  during  that  week  he  had  taken  about  500  birds,  and  that 
that  number  was  a  fair  average  for  each  of  the  12  other  roccolos. 

This  means  the  destruction  of  about  5,000  songbirds  per  week  in 
that  neighborhood  alone!  Another  keeper  of  a  roccolo  told  Mr.  Astley 
that  during  the  previous  autumn  he  took  about  10,000  birds  at  his  small 
and  comparatively  insignificant  roccolo. 

And  above  that  awful  roccolo  of  slaughtered  innocents  rose  a  wooden 
cross,  in  memory  of  Christ,  the  Merciful,  the  Compassionate ! 

Around  the  interior  of  the  entwined  sapling  tops  that  formed  the 
fatal  bower  of  death  there  hung  a  semicircle  of  tiny  cages  containing 
live  decoys, — chaffinches,  hawfinches,  titmice  and  several  other  species. 
"The  older  and  staider  ones  call  repeatedly,"  says  Mr.  Astley,  "and  the 
chaffinches  break  into  song.  It  is  the  only  song  to  be  heard  in  Italy  at 
the  time  of  the  autum  migration." 

And  the  King  of  Italy,  the  Queen  of  Italy,  the  Parliament  of  Italy 
and  His  Holiness  the  Pope  permit  these  things,  year  in  and  year  out. 
It  is  now  said,  however,  that  through  the  efforts  of  a  recently  organized 


98  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

bird-lovers'  society  in  Italy,  the  blinding  of  decoy  birds  for  roccclos  is 
to  be  stopped. 

In  Germany,  Austria,  and  Switzerland,  the  protection  of  these  birds 
during  their  breeding  season  must  be  very  effective,  for  otherwise  the 
supply  for  the  Italian  slaughter  of  the  Innocents  would  long  ago  have 
fallen  to  nothing. 

The  Germans  love  birds,  and  all  wild  life.  I  wonder  how  they  like 
the  Italian  roccolo.  I  wonder  how  France  regards  it;  and  whether  the 
nations  of  Europe  north  of  Italy  will  endure  this  situation  forever. 

To  the  American  and  English  reader,  comment  on  the  practices 
recorded  above  is  quite  unnecessary,  except  the  observation  that  they 
betoken  a  callousness  of  feeling  and  a  depth  of  cruelty  and  destructive- 
ness  to  which,  sc  lar  as  known,  no  savages  ever  yet  have  sunk.  As  an 
exhibit  of  the  groveling  pusillanimity  of  the  human  soul,  the  roccolo  of 
northern  Italy  reveals  minus  qualities  which  can  not  be  expressed  either 
in  words  or  in  figures. 

And  whac  is  the  final  exhibit  of  the  gallant  knight  of  the  roccolo, 
the  feudal  lord  of  the  modern  castle  and  its  retainers  ? 

The  answer  is  given  by  Dr.  Louis  B.  Bishop,  in  an  article  on  "Birds 
in  the  Markets  of  Southern  Europe." 

In  Venice,  which  was  visited  in  October  and  November,  during  the 
fall  migration,  he  found  on  sale  in  the  markets,  as  food,  thousands  of 
songbirds. 

"Birds  were  there  in  profusion,  from  ducks  to  kites,  in  the  early 
morning,  hung  in  great  bunches  above  the  stalls,  but  by  9  A.  M.  most  of 
them  had  been  sold.  Ducks  and  shorebirds  occurred  in  some  numbers, 
but  the  vast  majority  were  small  sparrows,  larks  and  thrushes.  These 
were  there  during  my  visit  by  the  thousands,  if  not  ten  thousands.  To 
the  market  they  were  brought  in  large  sacks,  strung  in  fours  on  twigs 
which  had  been  passed  through  the  eyes  and  then  tied.  Most  of  these 
small  birds  had  been  trapped,  and  on  skinning  them  I  often  could  find 
no  injury  except  at  their  eyes.*  One  of  these  sacks  which  I  examined  on 
November  3,  contained  hundreds  of  birds,  largely  siskins,  skylarks  and 
bramblings.  As  a  rule  the  small  birds  that  were  not  sold  in  the  early 
morning  were  skinned  or  picked,  and  their  tiny  bodies  packed  in  regular 
order,,  breasts  up,  in  shallow  tin  boxes,  and  exposed  for  sale." 

"During  these  visits  to  the  Venetian  markets,  I  identified  60  species, 
and  procured  specimens  of  most.  As  nearly  as  I  can  remember,  small 
birds  cost  from  two  to  five  cents  apiece.  For  example  I  paid  $2.15  on 
Nov.  8,  for 

1  Woodcock,  1  Skylark, 

1  Jay,  1  Greenfinch, 

2  Starlings,  1  Bullfinch, 
2  Spotted  Crakes,  1  Redpoll, 

1  Song  Thrush,  3  Linnets, 

1  Gold-Crest,  2  Goldfinches, 

It  is  probable  that  these  birds  were  killed  by  piercing  the  head  through  the  eyes. 


SLAUGHTER    BY  ITALIANS 


99 


1  Long-Tailed  Titmouse, 
1  Great  Titmouse, 
1   Pipit, 
1  Redstart, 

6  Siskins, 
3  Reed  Buntings, 
3  Bramblings, 
—and  5  Chaffinches. 

Dvember  10,  I  paid  $8.25  for 

2  Coots, 

1  Water  Rail, 

1  Spotted  Crake, 

1  Sparrow  Hawk, 

2  Woodcock, 

1  Common  Redshank, 
1  Dusky  Redshank, 

2 

Dunlins.' 

1  European  Curlew, 

2  Kingfishers, 
2  Greenfinches, 
2  Wrens, 

1  Great  Titmouse, 
1  Blue  Titmouse, 
1   Redbreast,  and 

Of  course  there  were  various  species  of  upland  game  birds,  shore- 
birds  and  waterfowl, — everything,  in  fact,  that  could  be  found  and 
killed.  In  addition  to  the  passerine  birds  listed  above,  Dr.  Bishop 
noted  the  following,  all  in  Venice  alone : 


Skylark  ("in  great  numbers"). 

Crested  Lark, 

Calandra, 

Tree  Sparrow, 

Hawfinch, 

Yellow-Hammer, 

Blackbird, 

Fieldfare, 

Song  Thrush, 


Crossbill, 
House  Sparrow, 
Stonechat, 
Coal, 
Goldcrest, 
Rock  Pipit, 
White  Wagtail, 
Redwing. 


"In  Florence,"  says  Dr.  Bishop,  "I  visited  the  central  market  on 
November  26,  28,  29,  30,  December  1,  2,  3,  5,  6,  7,  8  and  9,  and  found 
birds  even  more  plentiful  than  in  Venice."  Besides  a  variety  of 
game  birds,  he  found  quantities  of  the  species  mentioned  above,  seen  in 
Venice,  and  also  the  following : 


Green  Sandpiper, 
Dotterel, 
Magpie, 
Corn  Bunting, 
Migratory  Quail, 
Green  Woodpecker, 
Spotted  Woodpecker, 
Wood  Lark, 


Gray  Wagtail. 


Brown  Creeper, 
Nuthatch, 

Black-Cap  Warbler, 
Black-Headed  Warbler, 
Fantail  Warbler, 
Missel  Thrush, 
Ring  Ouzel, 
Rock  Sparrow,  and 


"Here,  too  [at  Florence]  we  saw  often,  bunches  and  baskets  of  small 
birds,  chiefly  redbreasts,  hawked  through  the  streets.  .  .  .  Every 
Sunday  that  we  went  into  the  country  we  met  numbers  of  Italians  out 
shooting,  and  their  bags  seemed  to  consist  wholly  of  small  birds. 

"At  Genoa,  San  Remo,  Monte  Carlo  and  Nice,  between  December 
13  and  29,  I  did  not  visit  the  central  markets,  if  such  exist,  but  saw  fre- 
quently bunches  of  small  birds  hanging  outside  stores.  ...  A 
gentleman  who  spent  the  fall  on  an  automobile  trip  through  the  west  of 
FRANCE  from  Brittany  to  the  Pyrenees,  tells  me  he  noticed  these  bunches 
of  small  birds  on  sale  in  every  town  he  visited. 


100  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

"That  killing  song-birds  for  food,"  continues  Dr.  Bishop,  "is  not 
confined  to  the  poor  Italians  I  learned  on  October  27,  when  one  of  the 
most  prominent  and  wealthy  Italian  ornithologists — a  delightful  man — 
told  me  he  had  shot  180  skylarks  and  pipits  the  day  before,  and  that  his 
family  liked  them  far  better  than  other  game.  Our  prejudice  against 
selling  game  does  not  exist  in  Europe,  and  this  same  ornithologist  told 
me  he  often  shot  200  ducks  in  a  day  at  his  shooting-box,  sending  to  the 
market  what  he  could  not  use  himself.  On  November  1,  1910,  he  shot 
82  ducks,  and  on  November  8,  103,  chiefly  widgeon  and  teal." 

An  "ornithologist"  indeed!  A  "sportsman"  also,  is  he  not?  He 
belongs  with  his  brother  "ornithologists"  of  the  roccolos,  who  net  their 
"game"  with  the  aid  of  blind  birds!  Brave  men,  gallant  "sportsmen," 
are  these  men  of  Italy, — and  western  France  also  if  the  tale  is   true! 

If  the  people  of  Europe  can  stand  the  wholesale,  systematic  slaughter 
of  their  song  and  insectivorous  birds,  we  can!  If  they  are  too  mean- 
spirited  to  rise  up,  make  a  row  about  it,  and  stop  it,  then  let  them  pay 
the  price;  but,  by  the  Eternal,  Antonio  shall  not  come  to  this  coimtry 
with  the  song-bird  tastes  of  the  roccolo  and  indulge  them  here ! 

The  above  facts  have  been  cited,  not  at  all  for  the  benefit  of  Europe, 
but  for  our  own  good.  The  American  People  are  now  confronted  by 
the  Italian  and  Austrian  and  Hungarian  laborer  and  saloon-keeper 
and  mechanic,  and  all  Americans  should  have  an  exact  measure  of  the 
sentiments  of  southern  Europe  toward  our  wild  life  generally,  especially 
the  birds  that  we  do  not  shoot  at  all,  and  therefore  are  easy  to  kill. 

When  a  warden  or  a  citizen  arrests  an  alien  for  killing  any  of  our 
non-game  birds,  show  the  judge  these  records  of  how  they  do  things  in 
Italy,  and  ask  for  the  extreme  penalty. 

I  have  taken  pains  to  publish  the  above  facts  from  eye-witnesses 
in  order  that  every  game  commissioner,  game  warden  and  state  legis- 
lator who  reads  these  pages  may  know  exactly  what  he  is  "up  against" 
in  the  alien  population  of  our  country  from  southern  Europe.  For  un- 
numbered generations,  the  people  of  Italy  have  been  taught  to  believe 
that  it  is  perfectly  right  to  shoot  and  devour  every  song-bird  that  flies. 
The  Venetian  is  no  respector  of  species;  and  when  an  Italian  "ornithol- 
ogist" (!)  can  go  out  and  murder  180  linnets  and  pipits  in  one  day  for 
the  pot,  it  is  time  for  Americans  to  think  hard. 

We  sincerely  hope  that  it  will  not  require  blows  and  kicks  and  fines  to 
remove  from  Antonio's  head  the  idea  that  America  is  not  Italy,  and  that 
the  slaughter  of  song  birds  "don't  go"  in  this  country.  I  strongly  rec- 
ommend to  every  state  the  enactment  of  a  law  that  will  do  these  things : 

1. — Prohibit  the  owning,  carrying  or  use  of  firearms  by  aliens,  and 

2. — Prohibit  the  use  of  firearms  in  hunting  by  any  naturalized  alien 
from  southern  Europe  until  after  a  10-years'  residence  in  America. 

From  reports  that  have  come  to  me  at  first  hand  regarding  Italians  in 
the  East,  Hungarians  in  Pennsylvania  and  Austrians  in  Minnesota,  it 
seems  absolutely  certain  that  all  members  of  the  lower  classes  of  southern 
Europe  are  a  dangerous  menace  to  our  wild  life. 


SLAUGHTER  BY  ITALIANS  101 

On  account  of  the  now-accursed  land-of -liberty  idea,  every  foreigner 
who  sails  past  the  statue  on  Bcdloe's  Island  and  lands  on  our  liberty- 
ridden  shore,  is  firmly  convinced  that  now,  at  last,  he  can  do  as  he  pleases! 
And  as  one  of  his  first  ways  in  which  to  show  his  newly-acquired  personal 
liberty  and  independence  in  the  Land  of  Easy  Marks,  he  buys  a  gun 
and  goes  out  to  shoot  "free  game!" 

If  we,  as  a  people,  are  so  indolent  and  so  somnolent  that  Antonio 
gets  away  with  all  our  wild  birds,  then  do  we  deserve  to  be  robbed. 

Italians  are  pouring  into  America  in  a  steady  stream.  They  are 
strong,  prolific,  persistent  and  of  tireless  energy.  New  York  City  now 
contains  340,000  of  them.  They  work  while  the  native  Americans  sleep. 
Wherever  they  settle,  their  tendency  is  to  root  out  the  native  American 
and  take  his  place  and  his  income.  Toward  wild  life  the  Italian  laborer 
is  a  human  mongoose.  Give  him  power  to  act,  and  he  will  quickly  ex- 
terminate every  wild  thing  that  wears  feathers  or  hair.  To  our  song- 
birds he  is  literally  a  "pestilence  that  walkcth  at  noonday". 

As  we  have  shown,  the  Italian  is  a  born  pot-hunter,  and  he  has 
grown  up  in  the  fixed  belief  that  killing  song-birds  for  food  is  right !  To 
him  all  is  game  that  goes  into  the  bag.  The  moment  he  sets  foot  in  the 
open,  he  provides  himself  with  a  shot-gun,  and  he  looks  about  for  things 
to  kill.  It  is  "a  free  country;"  therefore,  he  may  kill  anything  he  can 
find,  cook  it  and  eat  it.  If  anybody  attempts  to  check  him, — sapristi! 
beware  his  gun!  He  cheerfully  invades  your  fields,  and  even  your  lawn; 
and  he  shoots  robins,  bluebirds,  thrushes,  catbirds,  grosbeaks,  tanagers, 
orioles,  woodpeckers,  quail,  snipe,  ducks,  crows,  and  herons. 

Down  in  Virginia,  near  Charlottesville,  an  Italian  who  was  working 
on  a  new  railroad  once  killed  a  turkey  buzzard;  and  he  selfishly  cooked 
it  and  ate  it,  all  alone.  A  pot-hunting  compatriot  of  his  heard  of  it, 
and  reproached  him  for  having  dined  on  game  in  camera.  In  the  quarrel 
that  ensued,  one  of  the  "sportsmen"  stabbed  the  other  to  death. 

When  the  New  York  Zoological  Society  began  work  on  its  Park  in 
1899,  the  northern  half  of  the  Borough  of  the  Bronx  was  a  regular  daily 
hunting-ground  for  the  slaughter  of  song-birds,  and  all  other  birds  that 
could  be  found.  Every  Sunday  it  was  "bangetty!"  "bang!"  from  Pel- 
ham  Bay  to  Van  Cortlandt.  The  police  force  paid  not  the  slightest 
attention  to  these  open,  flagrant,  shameless  violations  of  the  city  or- 
dinances and  the  state  bird  laws.  In  those  days  I  never  but  once  heard 
of  a  policeman  on  his  own  initiative  arresting  a  birdshooter,  even  on  Sun- 
day; but  whenever  meddlesome  special  wardens  from  the  Zoological 
Park  have  pointedly  called  upon  the  local  police  force  for  help,  it  has  al- 
ways been  given  with  cheerful  alacrity.  In  the  fall  of  1912  an  appeal 
to  the  Police  Commissioner  resulted  in  a  general  order  to  stop  all  hunting 
and  shooting  in  the  Borough  of  the  Bronx,  and  a  reform  is  now  on. 

The  war  on  the  bird-killers  in  New  York  City  began  in  1900.  It 
seemed  that  if  the  Zoological  Society  did  not  take  up  the  matter,  the 
slaughter  would  continue  indefinitely.  The  white  inan's  burden  was 
taken  up;  and  the  story  of  the  war  is  rather  illuminating.     Mr.  G.  O. 


102  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Shields,  President  of  the  League  of  American  Sportsmen,  quickly  became 
interested  in  the  matter,  and  entered  actively  into  the  campaign.  For 
months  unnumbered,  he  spent  every  Sunday  patroling  the  woods  and 
thickets  of  northern  New  York  and  Westchester  county,  usually  accom- 
panied by  John  J.  Rose  and  Rudolph  Bell  of  the  Zoological  Park  force, 
for  whom  appointments  as  deputy  game  wardens  had  been  secured  from 
the  State. 

The  adventures  of  that  redoubtable  trio  of  man-hunters  would  make 
an  interesting  chapter.  They  were  shot  at  by  poachers,  but  more  fre- 
quently they  shot  at  the  other  fellows.  Just  why  it  was  that  no  one  was 
killed,  no  one  seems  to  know.  Many  Italians  and  several  Americans 
were  arrested  while  hunting,  haled  to  court,  prosecuted  and  fined.  Fi- 
nally, a  reign  of  terror  set  in;  and  that  was  the  beginning  of  the  end.  It 
became  known  that  those  three  men  could  not  be  stopped  by  threats,  and 
that  they  always  got  their  man — unless  he  got  into  a  human  rabbit- 
warren  of  the  Italian  boarding-house  species.  That  was  the  only  escape 
that  was  possible. 

The  largest  haul  of  dead  birds  was  43  robins,  orioles,  thrushes  and 
woodpeckers,  captured  along  with  the  five  Italians  who  committed  the 
indiscretion  of  sitting  down  in  the  woods  to  divide  their  dead  birds.  We 
saved  all  the  birds  in  alcohol,  and  showed  them  in  court.  The  judge 
fined  two  of  the  Italians  $50  each,  and  the  other  three  were  sent  to  the 
penitentiary  for  two  months  each. 

Even  yet,  however,  at  long  intervals  an  occasional  son  of  sunny 
Italy  tries  his  luck  at  Sunday  bird  shooting;  but  if  anyone  yells  at  him 
to  "Halt!"  he  throws  away  his  gun  and  stampedes  through  the  brash 
like  a  frightened  deer.  The  birds  of  upper  New  York  are  now  fairly 
secure;  but  it  has  taken  ten  years  of  fighting  to  bring  it  about. 

Throughout  New  York  State,  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  Connecti- 
cut, Massachusetts,  and  even 'Minnesota,  wherever  there  are  large  settle- 
ments of  Italians  and  Hungarians,  the  reports  are  the  same.  They  swarm 
through  the  country  every  Sunday,  and  shoot  every  wild  thing  they  see. 
Wherever  there  are  large  construction  works, — railroads,  canals  or  aque- 
ducts,— look  for  bird  slaughter,  and  you  are  sure  to  find  it.  The  excep- 
tion to  this  rule,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  along  the  line  of  the  new  Catskill 
aqueduct,  coming  to  New  York  City.  The  contractors  have  elected 
not  to  permit  bird  slaughter,  and  the  rule  has  been  made  that  any  man 
who  goes  out  hunting  will  instantly  be  discharged.  That  is  the  best 
rule  that  ever  was  made  for  the  protection  of  birds  and  game  against 
gang- working  aliens. 

Let  every  state  and  province  in  America  look  out  sharply  for  the 
bird-killing  foreigner;  for  sooner  or  later,  he  will  surely  attack  your 
wild  life.  The  Italians  are  spreading,  spreading,  spreading.  If  you  are 
without  them  to-day,  to-morrow  they  will  be  around  you.  Meet  them 
at  the  threshold  with  drastic  laws,  throughly  enforced;  for  no  half  way 
measures  will  answer. 

Pennsylvania  has  had  the  worst  experience  of  alien  slaughterers  of 


SLAUGHTER   BY  ITALIANS  10^ 

any  state, — thus  far.  Six  of  her  game  wardens  have  been  killed,  and  eight 
or  ten  have  been  wounded,  by  shooting!  Finally  her  legislature  arose 
in  wrath,  and  passed  a  law  prohibiting  the  ownership  or  possession 
of  guns  of  any  kind  by  aliens.  The  law  gives  the  right  of  domiciliary 
search,  and  it  surely  is  enforced.  Of  course  the  foreign  population 
"kicked"  against  the  law,  but  the  People's  steam  roller  went  over  them 
just  the  same.  In  New  York,  we  require  from  an  alien  a  license  costing 
$20,  and  it  has  saved  a  million  (perhaps)  of  our  birds ;  but  the  Pennsyl- 
vania law  is  the  best.  It  may  be  taken  as  a  model  for  every  state  and 
province  in  America.    Its  text  is  as  follows: 

Section  1.  Be  it  enacted,  &c.,  That  from  and  after  the  passage  of  this  act,  it  shall 
be  unlawful  for  any  unnaturalized  foreign-born  resident  to  hunt  for  or  capture  or  kill, 
in  this  Commonwealth,  any  wild  bird  or  animal,  either  game  or  otherwise,  of  any 
description,  excepting  in  defense  of  person  or  property;  and  to  that  end  it  shall  be 
unlawful  for  any  unnaturalized  foreign-born  resident,  within  this  Commonwealth,  to 
either  own  or  be  possessed  of  a  shotgun  or  rifle  of  any  make.  Each  and  every  person 
violating  any  provision  of  this  section  shall,  upon  conviction  thereof,  be  sentenced  to 
pay  a  penalty  of  twenty-five  dollars  for  each  offense,  or  undergo  imprisonment  in  the 
common  jail  of  the  county  for  the  period  of  one  day  for  each  dollar  of  penalty  imposed. 
Provided,  That  in  addition  to  the  before-named  penalty,  all  guns  of  the  before-men- 
tioned kinds  found  in  possession  or  under  control  of  an  unnaturalized  foreign-born 
resident  shall,  upon  conviction  of  such  person,  or  upon  his  signing  a  declaration  of 
guilt  as  prescribed  by  this  act,  be  declared  forfeited  to  the  Commonwealth  of  Penn- 
sylvania, and  shall  be  sold  by  the  Board  of  Game  Commissioners  as  hereinafter  directed. 

Section  2.  For  the  purpose  of  this  act,  any  unnaturalized  foreign-born  person  who 
shall  reside  or  live  within  the  boundaries  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania  for 
ten  consecutive  days  shall  be  considered  a  resident  and  shall  be  liable  to  the  penalties 
imposed  for  violation  of  the  provisions  of  this  act. 

Seciion  3.  That  the  possession  of  a  shotgun  or  rifle  at  any  place  outside  of  a  building, 
within  this  Commonwealth,  by  an  unnaturalized  foreign-born  resident,  shall  be  con- 
clusive proof  of  a  violation  of  the  provisions  of  section  one  of  this  act,  and  shall  render 
any  person  convicted  thereof  liable  to  the  penalty  as  fixed  by  said  section. 

Section  4.  That  the  presence  of  a  shotgun  or  rifle  in  a  room  or  house,  or  building  or 
tent,  or  camp  of  any  description,  within  this  Commonwealth,  occupied  by  or  controlled 
by  an  unnaturalized  foreign-born  resident  shall  be  prima  facie  evidence  that  such  gun  is 
owned  or  controlled  by  the  person  occupying  or  controlling  the  property  in  which  such 
gun  is  found,  and  shall  render  such  person  liable  to  the  penalty  imposed  by  section  one 
of  this  act. 

Other  sections  provide  for  the  full  enforcement  of  this  law. 

It  is  now  high  time,  and  an  imperative  public  necessity,  that  every 
state  should  act  in  this  matter,  before  its  bird  life  is  suddenly  attacked, 
and  serious  inroads  made  upon  it.  Do  it  NOW!  The  enem}^  is  headed 
your  way.     Don't  wait  for  him  to  strike  the  first  blow ! 

Duty  of  the  Italian  Press  and  Clergy. — Now  what  is  the  best  remedy 
for  the  troubles  that  will  arise  for  Italians  in  America  because  of  wrong 
principles  established  in  Italy?  It  is  not  in  the  law,  the  police,  the 
court  and  the  punishment.  It  is  in  educating  the  Italian  into  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  duties  of  the  good  citizen  !  The  Italian  press  and  clergy  can 
do  this ;  and  no  one  else  can  do  it  so  easily,  so  quickly  and  so  well ! 

Those  two  powerful  forces  should  enter  seriously  upon  this  task.  In 
every  other  respect,  the  naturalized  Italian  tries  to  become  a  good  citi- 


104 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


zen,  and  adjust  himself  to  the  laws  and  the  customs  of  his  new  country. 
Why  should  he  not  do  this  in  regard  to  bird  life  ?  It  is  not  too  much 
to  ask,  nor  is  it  too  much  to  exact.  Does  the  Italian  workman,  or  store- 
keeper who  makes  his  living  by  honest  toil  enjoy  breaking  our  bird  laws, 
enjoy  irritating  and  injuring  those  with  whom  he  has  come  to  live? 
Does  he  enjoy  being  watched,  and  searched,  and  chased,  and  arrested, 

all  for  a  few  small  birds  that  he  does  not  need  for  food  ?  He  earns  good 

wages;  he  has  plenty  of  good  food;  and  he  must  be  educated  into  pro- 
tecting our  birds  instead  of  destroying  them.  The  Italian  newspapers 
and  clergy  have  a  serious  duty  to  perform  in  this  matter,  and  we  hope 
they  will  diligently  discharge  it . 


DEAD   SONG-BIRDS 

These  jars  contain  the  dead  bodies  of  43  valu- 
able insectivorous  birds  that  were  taken  from  two 
Italians  in  October,  1905,  in  the  suburbs  of  New 
York  City,  by  game  wardens  of  the  New  York 
Zoological  Society. 


CHAPTER  XII 

DESTRUCTION  OF   SONG  BIRDS  BY  SOUTHERN  NEGROES 
AND   POOR  WHITES 

Before  going  farther,'  there  is  one  point  that  I  wish  to  make  quite 
clear. 

Whenever  the  people  of  a  particular  race  make  a  specialty  of  some 
particular  type  of  wrong-doing,  anyone  who  pointedly  rebukes  the 
faulty  members  of  that  race  is  immediately  accused  of  "race  prejudice." 
On  account  of  the  facts  I  am  now  setting  forth  about  the  doings  of  Ital- 
ian and  negro  bird-killers,  I  expect  to  be  accused  along  that  line.  If  I 
am,  I  shall  strenuously  deny  the  charge.  Thr  facts  speak  for  themselves. 
Zoologically,  however,  I  am  strongly  prejudiced  against  the  people  of 
any  race,  creed,  club,  state  or  nation  who  make  a  specialty  of  any  par- 
ticularly offensive  type  of  bird  or  wild  animal  slaughter;  and  I  do  not 
care  who  knows  it. 

The  time  was,  and  I  remember  it  very  well,  when  even  the  poorest 
gunner  scorned  to  kill  birds  that  were  not  considered  "game."  In  days 
lang  syne,  many  a  zoological  collector  has  been  jeered  because  the 
specimens  he  had  killed  for  preservation  were  not  "game." 

But  times  have  changed.  In  the  wearing  of  furs,  we  have  bumped 
down  steps  both  high  and  steep.  In  1880  American  women  wore  seal- 
skin, marten,  otter,  beaver  and  mink.  To-day  nothing  that  wears  hair 
is  too  humble  to  be  skinned  and  worn.  To-day  "they  are  wearing" 
skins  of  muskrats,  foxes,  rabbits,  skunks,  domestic  cats,  squirrels,  and 
even  rats.  And  see  how  the  taste  for  game, — of  some  sections  of  our 
population, — also  has  gone  down. 

In  the  North,  the  Italians  are  fighting  for  the  privilege  of  eating  every- 
thing that  wears  feathers ;  but  we  allow  no  birds  to  be  shot  for  food  save 
game  birds  and  cranes.  In  the  South,  the  negroes  and  poor  whites  are 
killing  song-birds,  woodpeckers  and  doves  for  food;  and  in  several  states 
some  of  it  is  done  under  the  authority  of  the  laws.  Look  at  these  awful 
lists : 

IN  THESE  STATES,  ROBINS  ARE  LEGALLY  SHOT  AND  EATEN: 
Louisiana  North  Carolina  Tennessee  Texas 

Mississippi  South  Carolina  Maryland  Florida 

IN  THESE  STATES,   BLACKBIRDS  ARE  LEGALLY  vSHOT  AND  EATEN: 

Louisiana  Pennsylvania  Tennessee 

District  of  Columbia  South  Carolina 


106  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

CRANES  ARE  SHOT  AND  EATEN  IN  THESE  STATES: 
Colorado  North  Dakota  Nevada  Oklahoma  Nebraska 

In  Mississippi,  the  cedar  bird  is  legally  shot  and  eaten! 
In  North  Carolina,  the  meadow  lark  is  shot  and  eaten. 

IN  THE  FOLLOWING  STATES,  DOVES  ARE  CONSIDERED  "GAME,"  AND 
ARE  SHOT  IN  AN  "OPEN  SEASON:" 

Alabama  Georgia  Minnesota  Ohio 

Arkansas  Idaho  Mississippi  Oregon 

California  IlHnois  Missouri  Pennsylvania 

Connecticut  Kentucky  Nebraska  South  Carolina 

Delaware  Louisiana  New  Mexico  Tennessee 

Dist.  of  Columiba  Maryland  North  Carolina        Texas 

Utah  Virginia 

The  killing  of  doves  represents  a  great  and  widespread  decline  in  the 
ethics  of  sportsmanship.  In  the  twenty-six  States  named,  a  great  many 
men  who  call  themselves  sportsmen  indulge  in  the  cheap  and  ignoble 
pastime  of  potting  weak  and  confiding  doves.  It  is  on  a  par  with  the 
"sport"  of  hunting  English  sparrows  in  a  city  street.  Of  course  this 
is,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  matter  of  taste;  but  there  is  at  least  one  club 
of  sportsmen  into  which  no  dove-killer  can  enter,  provided  his  standard 
of  ethics  is  known  in  advance. 

With  the  killing  of  robins,  larks,  blackbirds  and  cedar  birds  for  food, 
the  case  is  quite  different.  No  white  man  calling  himself  a  sportsman 
ever  indulges  in  such  low  pastimes  as  the  killing  of  such  birds  for  food. 
That  burden  of  disgrace  rests  upon  the  negroes  and  poor  whites  of  the 
South;  but  at  the  same  time,  it  is  a  shame  that  respectable  white  men 
sitting  in  state  legislatures  should  deliberately  enact  laws  permitting 
such  disgraceful  practices,  or  permit  such  disgraceful  and  ungentlemanly 
laws  to  remain  in  force ! 

Here  is  a  case  by  way  of  illustration,  copied  very  recently  from  the 
Atlanta  Journal: 

Editor  Journal: — I  located  a  robin  roost  up  the  Trinity  River,  six  miles  from 
Dallas,  and  prevailed  on  six  Dallas  sportsmen  to  go  with  me  on  a  torch-light  bird  hunt. 
This  style  of  hunting  was,  of  course,  new  to  the  Texans,  but  they  finally  consented  to 
go,  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  showing  them  how  it  was  done. 

Equipped  with  torch  lights  and  shot  guns,  we  proceeded.  After  reaching  the 
hunting  grounds  the  sport  began  in  reality,  and  continued  for  two  hours  and  ten 
minutes,  with  a  total  slaughter  of  10,157  birds,  an  average  of  1,451  birds  killed  by  each 
man. 

But  the  Texans  give  me  credit  for  killing  at  least  2,000  of  the  entire  number. 
I  was  called  'the  king  of  bird  hunters'  by  the  sportsmen  of  Dallas,  Texas,  and  have 
been  invited  to  command-in-chief  the  next  party  of  hunters  which  go  from  Dallas  to 
the  Indian  Territory  in  search  of  large  game.— F.  L.  CROW,  Dallas,  Texas,  former 
Atlantan. 

Dallas,  Texas,  papers  and  Oklahoma  papers,  please  copy ! 

As  a  further  illustration  of  the  spirit  manifested  in  the  South  toward 


BIRD  SLAUGHTER  IN  THE  SOUTH 


107 


THE  ROBIN  OF  THE  NORTH 

Our  best-beloved  Song  Bird,  now  being  legally  shot  as  "gam: 
the  South.     In  the  North  there  is  now  only  one  robin  for 
every  ten  formerly  there. 


robins,  I  quote  the  follow- 
ing story  from  Dr.  P.  P. 
Claxton,  of  the  University 
of  Tennessee,  as  related  in 
Audubon  Educational 
Leaflet  No.  46,  by  Mr.  T. 
Gilbert  Pearson: — 

"The  roost  to  which  I 
refer,"  says  Professor  Clax- 
ton, "was  situated  in  what 
is  locally  known  as  a  'cedar 
glade,'  near  Forestville, 
Bedford  Co.,  Tennessee. 
This  is  a  great  cedar  coun- 
try, and  robins  used  to 
come  in  immense  numbers 
during  the  winter  months, 
to  feed  on  the  berries. 

"The  spot  which  the 
roost  occupied  was  not  un- 
like numerous  others  that  might  have  been  selected.  The  trees  grew  to  a 
height  of  from  five  to  thirty  feet,  and  for  a  mi'e  square  were  literally 
loaded  at  night  with  robins.  Hunting  them  while  they  roosted  was  a 
favorite  sport.  A  man 
would  climb  a  cedar  tree 
with  a  torch,  while  his  com- 
panions with  poles  and 
clubs  would  disturb  the 
sleeping  birds  on  the  ad- 
jacent trees.  Blinded  by 
the  light,  the  suddenly 
awakened  birds  flew  to  the 
torch-bearer;  who,  as  he 
seized  each  bird  would 
quickly  pull  off  its  head,  and 
drop  it  into  a  sack  sus- 
pended from  his  shoulders. 
"The  capture  of  three 
of  four  hundred  birds  was 
an  ordinary  night's  work. 
Men  and  boys  would  come 
in  wagons  from  all  the  ad- 
joining counties  and  camp 
near  the  roost  for  the  pur- 
pose of  killing  robins. 
Many  times,  100  or  more 
hunters  with  torches  and 
clubs  would  be  at  work  in 


THE   MOCKIXC.-niRD  OF  THE   SOUTH 


This  sweet  singer  of  the  South  is  NOT  being  shot  in  the  North 

for  food  !   No  northern  lawmaker  ever  will  permit  such 

barbarity. 


108 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


W 

\ 

^  <,>'    ^^v&#-  f  ^ 

k  Jb 

11 

,^ 

^":.p''^^^^5;^^gM|fe^ 

1:  :*'' 

-^i^^n^^^^^^^^^^H 

NORTHERN  ROBINS  READY  FOR  SOUTHERN  SLAUGHTER 

19.5  Birds  at  Avery  Island,  La.  in  January  1912,  Photographed  During  the  Annual 
Slaughter,  by  E.  A.  Mcllhenny 

a  single  night.     For  three  years  this  tremendous  slaughter  continued  in 
winter, — and  then  the  survivors  deserted  the  roost."    '  -  '■-  ■ 

No:  these  people  were  not  Apache  Indians,  led  by  a  Geronimo  who 
knew  no  mercy,  no  coinpassion.  We  imagine  that  they  were  mostly 
poor  white  trash,  of  Tennessee.  One  small  hamlet  sent  to  market  annu- 
ally enough  dead  robins  to  return  $500  at  five  cents  per  dozen;  which  means 
120,000  birds! ) 

Last  winter  Mr.  Edward  A.  Mcllhenny  of  Avery  Island,  La.  (south 
of  New  Iberia)  informed  me  that  every  winter,  during  the  two  weeks  that 
the  holly  berries  are  ripe  thousands  of  robins  come  to  his  vicinity  to 
feed  upon  them.  "Then  every  negro  man  and  boy  who  can  raise  a  gun  is 
after  them.  About  10,000  robins  are  slaughtered  each  day  while  they 
remain.  Their  dead  bodies  are  sold  in  New  Iberia  at  10  cents  each."  The 
accompanying  illustrations  taken  by  Mr.  Mcllhenny  shows  195  robins 
on  one  tree,  and  explains  how  such  great  slaughter  is  possible. 

An  officer  of  the  Louisiana  Audubon  Society  states  that  a  conserv- 
ative  estimate   of   the  number  of   robins  annually  killed  in  Louisiana 


BIRD-SLAUGHTER    IN   THE   SOUTH  109 

for  food    purposes    when   they   are  usually   plentiful,  is  a  quarter  of  a 
million ! 

The  food  of  the  robin  is  as  follows : 

Insects,  40  per  cent;  wild  fruit,  43  per  cent;  cultivated  fruit,  8  per 
cent,  miscellaneous  vegetable  food,  5  per  cent. 

Special  Work  of  the  Southern  Negroes. — In  1912  a  female  colored 
servant  who  recently  had  arrived  from  country  life  in  Virginia  chanced 
to  remark  to  me  at  our  country  home  in  the  middle  of  August :  "I  wish  I 
could  find  some  birds'  nests!" 

"What  for?"  I  asked,  rather  puzzled. 

"Why,  to  get  the  aigs  and  eat  'em!"  she  responded  with  a  bright 
smile  and  flashing  teeth. 

' '  Do  you  eat  the  eggs  of  wild  birds ' ' ' 

"Yes  indeed!  It's  fine  to  get  a  pattridge  nest!  From  them  we 
nearly  always  git  a  whole  dozen  of  aigs  at  once, — back  where  I  live,  in 
Virginia." 

"Do  the  colored  people  of  Virginia  make  a  practice  of  hunting  for 
the  eggs  of  wild  birds,  and  eating  them?" 

"Yes,  indeed  we  do.  In  the  spring  and  summer,  when  the  birds  are 
around,  we  used  to  get  out  every  Sunday,  and  hunt  all  day.  Some  days 
we'd  come  back  with  a  whole  bucket  full  of  aigs;  and  then  we'd  set  up 
half  the  night,  cookin'  and  eatin'  'em.     They  was  awful  good!" 

Her  face  fairly  beamed  at  the  memory  of  it. 

A  few  days  later,  this  story  of  the  doings  of  Virginia  negroes  was 
fully  corroborated  by  a  colored  man  who  came  from  another  section 
of  that  state.  Three  months  later,  after  special  inquiries  made  at  my 
request,  a  gentleman  of  Richmond  obtained  further  corroboration,  from 
negroes.  He  was  himself  much  surprised  by  the  state  of  fact  that  was 
revealed  to  him. 

In  the  North,  the  economic  value  of  our  song  birds  and  other  de- 
stroyers of  insects  and  weed  seeds  is  understood  by  a  majority  of  the 
people,  and  as  far  as  possible  those  birds  are  protected  from  all  human 
enemies.  But  in  the  South,  a  new  division  of  the  Army  of  Destruction 
has  risen  into  deadly  prominence. 

In  Recreation  Magazine  for  May,  1909,  Mr.  Charles  Askins  published 
a  most  startling  and  illuminating  article,  entitled  "The  South's  Problem 
in  Game  Protection."  It  brought  together  in  concrete  form  and  with 
eye-witness  reliability  the  impressions  that  for  months  previous  had 
been  gaining  ground  in  the  North.  In  order  to  give  the  testimony  of  a 
man  who  has  seen  what  he  describes,  I  shall  now  give  numerous  quo- 
tations from  Mr.  Askins'  article,  which  certainly  bears  the  stamp  of 
truthfulness,  without  any  "race  prejudice"  whatever.  It  is  a  calm, 
judicial,  unemotional  analysis  of  a  very  bad  situation:  and  I  particularly 
commend  it  alike  to  the  farmers  of  the  North  and  all  the  true  sportsmen 
of  the  South. 


110  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE     ^ 

In  his  opening  paragraphs  Mr.  Askins  describes  game  and  hunting 
conditions  in  the  South  as  they  were  down  to  twenty  years  ago,  wheri  the 
negroes  were  too  poor  to  own  guns,  and  shooting  was  not  for  them. 

SPECIAL  WORK  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  NEGROES. 

It  is  all  different  now,  says  Mr.  Askins,  and  the  old  days  will  only  come  back  with 
the  water  that  has  gone  down  the  stream.  The  master  is  with  his  fathers  or  he  is 
whiling  away  his  last  days  on  the  courthouse  steps  of  the  town.  Perhaps  a  chimney  or 
two  remain  of  what  was  once  the  "big  house  "  on  the  hill ;  possibly  it  is  still  standing,  but 
as  forlorn  and  lifeless  as  a  dead  tree.  The  muscadine  grapes  still  grow  in  the  swale 
and  the  persimmons  in  the  pasture  field,  but  neither  'possum  nor  'coon  is  left  to  eat 
them.  The  last  deer  vanished  years  ago,  the  rabbits  died  in  their  baby  coats  and  the 
quail  were  killed  in  June.  Old  "Uncle  Ike"  has  gone  across  the  "Great  River"  with 
his  master,  and  his  grandson  glances  at  you  askance,  nods  sullenly,  whistles  to  his 
halfbreed  bird  dog,  shoulders  his  three  dollar  gun  and  leaves  you.  He  is  typical  of  the 
change  and  has  caused  it,  this  grandson  of  dear  old  Uncle  Ike. 

In  the  same  way  the  white  man  is  telling  the  black  to  abide  upon  the  plantation 
raising  cotton  and  corn,  and  further  than  this  nothing  will  be  required  of  him.  He  can 
cheat  a  white  man  or  a  black,  steal  in  a  petty  way  anything  that  comes  handy,  live  in 
marriage  or  out  of  it  to  please  himself,  kill  another  negro  if  he  likes,  and  lastly  shoot 
every  wild  thing  that  can  be  eaten,  if  only  he  raises  the  cotton  and  the  corn.  But  the 
white  sportsmen  of  the  South  have  never  willingly  granted  the  shooting  privilege  in 
its  entirety,  and  hence  this  story.  They  have  told  him  to  trap  the  rabbits,  pot  the  robins, 
slaughter  the  doves,  kill  the  song  birds,  but  to  spare  the  white  sportsman's  game,  the 
aristocratic  little  bobwhite  quail. 

In  the  beginning  not  so  much  damage  to  southern  game  interests  could  be  accom- 
pUshed  by  our  colored  man  and  brother,  however  decided  his  inclinations.  He  had  no 
money,  no  ammunition  and  no  gun.  His  weapons  were  an  ax,  a  club,  a  trap,  and 
a  hound  dog;  possibly  he  might  own  an  old  war  musket  bored  out  for  shot.  Such  an 
outfit  was  not  adapted  to  quail  shooting  and  especially  to  wing  shooting,  with  which 
knowledge  Dixie's  sportsmen  were  content.  Let  the  negro  ramble  about  with  his  hound 
dog  and  his  war  musket;  he  couldn't  possibly  kill  the  quail.  And  so  Uncle  Ike's  grand- 
son loafed  and  pottered  about  in  the  fields  with  his  ax  and  his  hound  dogs,  not  doing 
so  much  harm  to  the  quail  but  acquiring  knowledge  of  the  habits  of  the  birds  and  skill 
as  a  still-hunting  pot-hunter  that  would  serve  him  well  later  on.  The  negro  belongs 
to  a  primitive  race  of  people  and  all  such  races  have  keener  eyes  than  white  men  \yhose 
fathers  have  pored  over  lines  of  black  and  white.  He  learned  to  see  the  rabbit  in  its 
form,  the  squirrels  in  the  leafy  trees,  and  the  quails  huddled  in  the  grass.  The  least 
shade  of  gray  in  the  shadow  of  the  creek  bank  he  distinguished  at  once  as  a  rabbit,  a 
glinting  flash  from  a  tree  top  he  knew  instantly  as  being  caused  by  the  slight  movement 
of  a  hidden  squirrel,  and  the  quiver  of  a  single  stem  of  sedge  grass  told  him  of  a  bevy 
of  birds  hiding  in  the  depths.  The  pot-hunting  negro  has  all  the  skill  of  the  Indian, 
has  more  industry  in  his  loafing,  and  kills  without  pity  and  without  restraint.  This 
grandson  of  Uncle  Ike  was  growing  sulky,  too,  with  the  knowledge  that  the  white  man 
was  bribing  him  with  half  a  loaf  to  raise  cotton  and  corn  wJien  he  might  as  well  exact 
it  all.    And  this  he  shortly  did,  as  we  shall  see. 

The  time  came  when  cotton  went  up  to  sixteen  cents  a  pound  and  single  breech- 
loading  guns  went  down  to  five  dollars  apiece.  The  negro  had  money  now,  and  the 
merchants — these  men  who  had  said  let  the  nigger  alone  so  long  as  he  raises  cotton 
and  corn — sold  him  the  guns,  a  gun  for  every  black  idler,  man  and  boy,  in  all  the  South. 
Then  shortly  a  wail  went  up  from  the  sportsmen,  "The  niggers  are  killing  our  quail." 
They  not  only  were  killing  them,  but  most  of  the  birds  were  already  dead.  On  the 
grounds  of  the  Southern  Field  Club  where  sixty  bevies  were  raised  by  the  dogs  in  one 
day,  within  two  years  but  three  bevies  could  be  found  in  a  day  by  the  hardest  kind  of 
hunting;  and  this  story  was  repeated  all  over  the  South.  Now  the  negro  began  to 
raise  bird  dogs  in  place  of  hounds,  and  he  carried  his  new  gun  to  church  if  services 
happened  to  be  held  on  a  week  day.     Finally  the  negro  had  grown  up  and  had  com- 


112  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

passed  his  ambition:  he  could  shoot  partridges  flying  just  the  same  as  a  white  man, 
was  a  white  man  except  for  a  trifling  difference  in  color;  and  he  could  kill  more  birds, 
too,  three  times  as  many.  It  was  merely  a  change  from  the  old  order  to  the  new  in 
which  a  dark-skinned  "sportsman"  had  taken  the  place  in  plantation  life  of  the  dear 
old  "Colonel"  of  loved  memory.  The  negro  had  exacted  his  price  for  raising  cotton 
and  corn. 

Our  colored  sportsman  is  gregarious  at  all  times,  but  especially  so  in  the  matter  of 
recreation.  He  may  slouch  about  alone  and  pot  a  bevy  or  two  of  quail  when  in  actual 
need  of  something  to  eat,  or  when  he  has  a  sale  for  the  birds,  but  when  it  comes  to 
shooting  for  fun  he  wants  to  be  with  the  "gang."  I  have  seen  the  darkies  at  Christmas 
time  collect  fifty  in  a  drove  with  every  man  his  dog,  and  spread  out  over  the  fields. 
Such  a  glorious  time  as  he  has  then !  A  single  cottontail  will  draw  a  half-dozen  shots 
and  perhaps  a  couple  of  young  bucks  will  pour  loads  into  a  bunny  after  he  is  dead  out  of 
pure  deviltry  and  high  spirits.  I  once  witnessed  the  accidental  killing  of  a  young  negro 
on  this  kind  of  a  foray.  His  companions  loaded  him  into  a  wagon,  stuck  a  cigar  in 
his  mouth,  and  tried  to  pour  whiskey  down  him  every  time  they  took  a  drink  them- 
selves as  they  rode  back  to  town.  This  army  of  black  hunters  and  their  dogs  cross 
field  after  field,  combing  the  country  with  fine  teeth  that  leave  neither  wild  animal 
nor  bird  life  behind. 

There  comes  a  time  toward  the  spring  of  the  year  after  the  quail  season  is  over 
when  the  average  rural  darky  is  "between  hay  and  grass."  The  merchants  on  whom 
he  has  depended  for  suppHes  make  it  a  practice  to  refuse  credit  between  January  first 
and  crop  time.  The  black  has  spent  his  cotton  money,  his  sweet  potato  pile  has 
vanished,  the  sorghum  barrel  is  empty,  he  has  eaten  the  last  of  his  winter's  pork,  and 
all  that  remains  is  a  bit  of  meal  and  the  meat  his  gun  can  secure.  He  is  hunting  in 
grim  earnest  now,  using  all  the  cunning  and  skill  acquired  by  years  of  practice.  He 
eats  woodpeckers,  jaybirds,  hawks  and  skunks,  drawing  the  line  only  at  crows  and 
buzzards.  At  this  season  of  the  year  I  have  carried  chicken  hawks  up  to  the  cabins 
for  the  sake  of  watching  the  delight  of  the  piccaninnies  who  with  glowing  eyes  would 
declare,  "Them's  mos'  as  good  as  chicken."  What  happens  to  the  robins,  doves,  larks, 
red  birds,  mocking  birds  and  all  songsters  in  this  hungry  season  needs  hardly  to  be 
stated. 

It  is  also  a  time  between  hay  and  grass  for  the  rabbits  and  the  quail.  The  corn 
fields  are  bare  and  the  weed  seeds  are  exhausted.  A  spring  cold  spell  pinches,  they 
lose  their  vitality,  become  thin  and  quite  lack  their  ordinary  wariness.  Then  the 
figure-four  trap  springs  up  in  the  hedgerow  and  the  sedge  while  the  work  of  decimation 
goes  more  rapidly  along.  The  rabbits  can  no  longer  escape  the  half-starved  dogs,  the 
thinning  cover  fails  to  hide  the  quail  and  the  song  birds  betray  themselves  by  singing 
of  the  coming  spring. 

With  the  growing  scarcity  of  the  game  now  comes  the  season  of  sedge  and  field 
burning.  This  is  done  ostensibly  to  prepare  the  land  for  spring  plowing,  but  really  to 
destroy  the  last  refuge  of  the  quail  and  rabbits  so  that  they  can  be  bagged  witli  cer- 
tainty. All  the  negroes  of  a  neighborhood  collect  for  one  of  these  burnings,  all  their 
dogs,  and  of  course  all  the  boys  from  six  years  old  up.  They  surround  the  field  and 
set  it  on  fire  in  many  places,  leaving  small  openings  for  the  game  to  dash  out  among 
the  motley  assembly.  I  have  seen  quail  fly  out  of  the  burning  grass  with  flaming 
particles  still  attached  to  them.  They  alight  on  the  burnt  ground  too  bewildered  to 
fly  again  and  the  boys  and  dogs  pick  them  up.  Crazed  rabbits  try  the  gauntlet  amidst 
the  barking  curs,  shouting  negroes  and  popping  guns,  but  death  is  sure  and  quick.  The 
few  quail  that  may  escape  have  no  refuge  from  the  hawks  and  nothing  to  eat,  so  every 
battue  of  this  kind  marks  the  absolute  end  of  the  birds  in  one  vicinity;  and  the  next 
day  the  darkies  repeat  the  performance  elsewhere. 

At  this  season  of  the  year,  the  first  of  May,  the  blacks  are  putting  in  some  of  their 
one  hundred  working  days  while  the  single  breech-loader  rusts  in  the  chimney  corner. 
Surely  the  few  birds  that  have  escaped  the  foray  of  the  "gang,"  lived  through  the 
hungry  days,  and  survived  their  burned  homes  can  now  call  "Bob  White"  and  mate 
in  peace.     But  school  is  out  and  the  summer  sun  is  putting  new  life  into  the  bare  feet 


BIRD-SLAUGHTER   IN    THE   SOUTH  113 

of  the  half -grown  boys,  and  the  halfbreed  bird  dogs  are  busier  than  they  were  even  in 
winter.  The  young  rabbits  are  killed  before  they  get  out  of  the  nest,  and  the  quail 
eggs  must  be  hidden  rarely  well  that  escape  both  the  eyes  of  the  boys  and  the  noses  of 
the  dogs.  After  all  it  is  not  surprising  that  but  three  bevies  remained  of  the  sixty. 
Doubtless  they  would  not,  except  that  nature  is  very  kind  to  her  own  in  the  sunny  South. 

Not  every  white  man  in  the  South  is  a  sportsman  or  even  a  shooter;  many  are 
purely  business  men  who  have  said  let  the  "nigger"  do  as  he  likes  so  long  as  he  raises 
cotton  and  buys  our  goods.  But  Dixie  has  her  full  share  of  true  men  of  the  out-of-doors 
and  they  have  sworn  in  downright  Southern  fashion  that  this  thing  has  got  to  end. 
Nevertheless  their  problem  is  deep  and  puzzling.  In  Alabama  they  made  an  effort 
and  a  beginning.  They  asked  for  a  law  requiring  every  man  to  obtain  written  permission 
before  entering  the  lands  of  another  to  hunt  and  shoot ;  they  asked  for  a  resident  license 
law  taxing  every  gun  not  less  than  five  dollars  a  year;  for  a  shortened  season,  a  bag 
limit,  and  a  complete  system  of  State  wardens.  Unfortunately,  a  lot  of  white  farmers 
were  in  the  same  range  as  the  blacks,  and  being  hit,  too,  they  raised  a  great  out- 
cry. The  result  was  that  the  Alabama  sportsmen  got  everything  they  asked  for  ex- 
cept the  foundation  of  the  structure  they  were  trying  to  build,  the  high  resident  license 
or  gun  tax  which  alone  could  have  shut  out  three  dollar  guns  and  saved  the  remnant 
of  the  game.  Under  the  new  law  the  sale  of  game  was  forl:)idden,  neither  could  it  be 
shipped  out  of  the  State  alive  or  dead ;  the  ever  popular  non-resident  license  was  pro- 
vided for;  the  season  was  shortened  and  the  bag  limited ;  the  office  of  State  game  warden 
was  created  with  deputies  to  be  paid  from  fines;  hunting  upon  the  lands  of  another 
without  written  permission  became  a  misdemeanor;  and  then  the  whole  thing  was 
nullified  by  reducing  the  resident  license  to  nothing  where  a  man  shot  upon  his  own 
land,  one  dollar  in  his  own  county,  and  two  dollars  outside  of  it.  In  its  practical 
workings  the  new  law  amounts  to  this:  A  few  northern  gunners  have  paid  the  non- 
resident license  fee,  and  enough  resident  licenses  have  been  taken  out  by  the  city 
sportsmen  to  make  up  the  handsome  salary  of  the  State  warden.  The  negro  still  hunts 
upon  his  own  land  or  upon  the  land  of  the  man  who  wants  corn  and  cotton  raised,  "with 
perfect  indifference  to  the  whole  thing.  Who  was  to  enforce  the  law  against  him? 
Not  the  one  disgusted  deputy  with  three  big  counties  to  patrol  who  depended  for  his  salary 
upon  the  fines  collected  from  the  negroes.  It  would  take  one  man  to  every  three  miles 
square  to  protect  the  game  in  the  South. 

The  one  effective  way  of  dealing  with  the  situation  in  Alabama  was  to  have  legis- 
lated three  dollar  guns  out  of  existence  with  a  five  dollar  tax,  adding  to  this  nearly  a 
like  amount  on  dogs.  Hardly  a  sportsman  in  the  South  will  disagree  with  this  con- 
clusion. But  sportsmen  never  had  a  majority  vote  either  in  the  South  or  'n  the  North, 
and  the  vSouth's  grave  problem  is  yet  unsolved. 

I  do  not  favor  depriving  the  black  man  of  his  natural  human  right  to  hunt  and 
shoot.  If  he  is  the  owner  of  land,  or  if  he  leases  or  rents  it,  or  if  he  does  not,  he  should 
have  exactly  the  same  privilege  of  hunting  that  the  white  man  has.  That  is  not  the 
question  now,  however,  but  how  to  restrict  him  to  legal  shooting,  to  make  him  amen- 
able to  the  law  that  governs  the  white  man,  to  deprive  him  of  the  absolute  license  he 
now  enjoys  to  kill  throughout  the  year  without  mercy,  without  discrimination,  without 
restraint.  If  only  for  selfish  reasons,  we  of  the  North  should  reach  to  southern  sports- 
men a  helping  hand,  for  by  and  by  the  last  of  our  migratory  song  birds  will  go  down 
into  Dixie  and  never  return. 

Mr.  Askins  has  fairly  stated  a  profoundly  disturbing  case.  The 
remedy  must  contain  at  least  three  ingredients.  The  sportsmen  of  the 
South  must  stop  the  unjustifiable  slaughter  of  their  non-migratory  game 
birds.  As  a  matter  of  comity  between  states,  the  gentlemen  of  the  South 
must  pass  laws  to  stop  the  killing  of  northern  song-birds  and  all  crop- 
protecting  birds,  for  food.  Finally,  all  men,  North  and  South,  East  and 
West,  must  unite  in  the  work  that  is  necessary  to  secure  the  immediate 
enactment  by  Congress  of  a  law  for  the  federal  protection  of  all  migra- 
tory birds. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
EXTERMINATION   OF  BIRDS  FOR  WOMEN'S  HATS* 

It  is  high  time  for  the  whole  civiHzed  world  to  know  that  many  of 
the  most  beautiful  and  remarkable  birds  of  the  world  are  now  being 
exterminated  to  furnish  millinery  ornaments  for  women's  wear.  The 
mass  of  new  information  that  we  have  recently  secured  on  this  trafiic 
from  the  headquarters  of  the  feather  trade  is  appalling.  Previously,  I 
had  not  dreamed  that  conditions  are  half  as  bad  as  they  are. 

It  is  entirely  fitting  that  on  this  subject  New  York  should  send  a 
message  to  London.  New  York  is  almost  a  Spotless  Town  in  plume-free 
millinery,  and  London  and  Paris  are  the  worst  places  in  the  world.  We 
have  cleaned  house.  With  but  extremely  slight  exceptions,  the  blood  of 
the  slaughtered  innocents  is  no  lor.^er  upon  our  skirts,  and  on  the  subject 
of  plumage  millinery  we  have  a  right  to  be  just  as  Pharisaical  as  we  choose. 

Here  in  New  York  (and  also  in  New  Jersey)  no  man  may  sell,  own 
for  sale  or  offer  for  sale  the  plumage  of  any  wild  American  bird  other 
than  a  game  bird.  More  than  that,  the  plumage  of  no  foreign  bird  be- 
longing to  any  bird  family  represented  in  the  fauna  of  North  America 
can  be  sold  here!  There  are  only  a  few  kinds  of  improper  "millinery" 
feathers  that  it  is  possible  to  sell  here  under  the  law.  Thanks  to  the 
long  and  arduous  campaign  of  the  National  Association  of  Audubon 
Societies,  founded  and  for  ten  years  directed  by  gallant  William  Dutcher, 
you  now  see  on  the  streets  of  New  York  very,  very  little  wild-bird  plum- 
age save  tha't  from  game  birds. 

It  is  true  that  a  few  servant  girls  are  now  wearing  the  cast-off  aigrettes 
of  their  mistresses;  but  they  are  only  as  one  in  a  thousand.  At  Atlantic 
City  there  is  said  to  be  a  fine  display  of  servant-girl  and  ladies-maid 
aigrettes.  In  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  in  Pennsylvania  for  every- 
thing save  the  sale  of  heron  and  egret  plumes  (a  privilege  obtained  by  a 
bunko  game),  in  Massachusetts,  and  in  many  other  of  our  States,  the 
wild-birds'-plumage  millinery  business  is  dead.  Two  years  ago,  when  the 
New  York  legislature  refused  to  repeal  the  Dutcher  law,  the  Millinery 
Association  asserted,  and  brought  a  cloud  of  witnesses  to  Albany  to 
prove,  that  the  enforcement  of  the  law  would  throw  thousands  of  oper- 
atives out  of  employment. 

The  law  is  in  effect;  and  the  aigrette  business  is  dead  in  this  state. 
Have  any  operatives  starved,  or  been  thrown  out  of  employment?    We 

*In  the  preparation  of  this  chapter  and  its  illustrations,  I  have  had  much  valuable 
assistance  from  Mr.  C.  Willjam  Beebe,  who  recently  has  probed  the  London  feather 
trade  almost  to  the  bottom. 


^'  ^  vt*^.;-^ 


4 

-■i 


>.ifc 


■      .  fc 


.     n  ^  ,  Common  Tern 

^Sa^rfw  Pigeon  Cock  of  the  Rock 

Superb  Calliste 


116 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


i  /'t^.'tA  ■tii.^Wf'-  i  V*i 

%mm':-0liii^ 

1600  HUMMINGBIRD  SKINS  AT  2  CENTS  EACH! 

Part  of  i\  Lot  Purchased  by  the  Zoological  Society  at  the  Regular  Quarterly 

London  Millinery  Feather  Sale,  August,  1912. 


have  heard  of  none.  They  are  now  at  work  making  very  pretty  hat  orna- 
ments of  silk  and  ribbons,  and  gauze  and  lace;  and  "  They  are  wearing 
them." 

But  even  while  these  words  are  being  written,  there  is  one  large  fly 
in  the  ointment.  The  store-window  of  E.  &.  S.  Meyers,  688  Broadway, 
New  York,  contains  about  six  hundred  plumes  and  skins  of  birds  of 
paradise,  for  sale  for  millinery  purposes.  No  wonder  the  great  bird  of 
paradise  is  now  almost  extinct !  Their  sale  here  is  possible  because  the 
Dutcher  law  protects  from  the  feather  dealers  only  the  birds  that  belong 
to  avian  families  represented  in  the  United  States.  With  fiendish  cun- 
ning and  enterprise,  the  shameless  feather  dealers  are  ferreting  out  the 
birds  whose  skins  and  plumes  may  legally  be  imported  into  this  country 


EXTERMINATION  FOR   WOMEN'S  HATS  117 

and  sold ;  but  we  will  meet  that  with  a  law  that  will  protect  all  foreign 
birds,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned.  Now  it  is  time  for  the  universal  en- 
actment of  a  law  which  will  prohibit  the  sale  and  use  as  ornaments  of 
the  plumage,  feathers  or  skins  of  any  wild  bird  that  is  not  a  legitimate 
game  bird. 

London  is  now  the  head  of  the  giant  octopus  of  the  "feather  trade" 
that  has  reached  out  its  deadly  tentacles  into  the  most  remote  wilder- 
nesses of  the  earth,  and  steadily  is  drawing  in  the  "skins "  and  "plumes " 
and  "  quills  "  of  the  most  beautiful  and  most  interesting  unprotected  birds 
of  the  world.  The  extent  of  this  cold-blooded  industry,  supported  by 
vain  and  hard-hearted  women,  will  presently  be  shown  in  detail.  Paris 
is  the  great  manufacturing  center  of  feather  trimming  and  ornaments, 
and  the  French  people  obstinately  refuse  to  protect  the  birds 
from  extermination,  because  their  slaughter  affords  employment  to 
a  certain  numbers  of  French  factory  operatives. 

All  over  the  world  where  they  have  real  estate  possessions,  the 
men  of  England  know  how  to  protect  game  from  extermination. 
The  English  are  good  at  protecting  game — when  they  decide  to  set 
about  it. 

Why  should  London  be  the  Mecca  of  the  feather-killers  of  the  world  ? 

It  is  easily  explained : 

(1)  London  has  the  greatest  feather  market  in  the  world;  (2)  the 
feather  industry  "wants  the  money";  and  (3)  the  London  feather  in- 
dustry is  willing  to  spend  money  in  fighting  to  retain  its  strangle-hold 
on  the  unprotected  birds  of  the  world. 

Let  us  run  through  a  small  portion  of  the  mass  of  fresh  evidence  before 
us.  It  will  be  easier  for  the  friends  of  birds  to  read  these  details  here 
than  to  procure  them  at  first  hand,  as  we  have  done. 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  one  is  the  fact  that  the  feather-hunters 
are  scattered  all  over  the  world  where  bird  life  is  plentiful  and  there  are  no 
laws  to  hinder  their  work.  -I  commend  to  every  friend  of  birds  this  list 
of  the  species  whose  plumage  is  to-day  being  bought  and  sold  in  large 
quantities  every  year  in  London.  To  the  birds  of  the  world  this  list  is 
of  deadly  import,  for  it  spells  extermination. 

The  reader  will  notice  that  it  is  the  way  of  the  millinery  octopus  to 
reach  out  to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth,  and  take  everything  that  it 
can  use.  From  the  trackless  jungles  of  New  Guinea,  round  the  world 
both  ways  to  the  snow-capped  peaks  of  the  Andes,  no  unprotected  bird 
is  safe.  The  humming-birds  of  Brazil,  the  egrets  of  the  world  at  large, 
the  rare  birds  of  paradise,  the  toucan,  the  eagle,  the  condor  and  the  emu, 
all  are  being  exterminated  to  swell  the  annual  profits  of  the  millinery 
trade.  The  case  is  far  more  serious  than  the  world  at  large  knows,  or 
even  suspects.  But  for  the  profits,  the  birds  would  be  safe;  and  no  un- 
protected wild  species  can  long  escape  the  hounds  of  Commerce. 

But  behold  the  list  of  rare,  curious  and  beautiful  birds  that  are  to- 
day in  grave  peril : 


BEAUTIFUL  AND  CURIOUS  BIRDS  NOW  BEING  DESTROYED 
FOR  THE  FEATHER  TRADE  —(II) 

Resplendent  Trogaa 
Silver  Pheasant 
Toco  Toucan 


Lyre  Bird 
White  Ibis 
Golden  Eagle 


EXTERMINATION   FOR   WOMEN'S  HATS  119 

List   of   Birds    Now   Being  Exterminated   for  the    London  and 
Continental  Feather  Markets: 

Species.  Locality. 

American  Egret Venezuela,  S.  America,  Mexico,  etc. 

Snowy  Egret Venezuela,  S.  America,  Mexico,  etc. 

Scarlet  Ibis Tropical  South  America. 

" Green"  Ibis Species  not  recognizable  by  its  trade 

name. 

Herons,  generally All  unprotected  regions. 

Marabou  Stork Africa. 

Pelicans,  all  species All  unprotected  regions. 

Bustard Southern  Asia,  Africa. 

Greater  Bird  of  Paradise New  Guinea;  Aru  Islands. 

Lesser  Bird  of  Paradise New  Guinea. 

Red  Bird  of  Paradise Islands  of  Waigiou  and  Batanta. 

Twelve-Wired  Bird  of  Paradise New  Guinea,  Salwatti. 

Black  Bird  of  Paradise Northern  New  Guinea. 

Rifle  Bird  of  Paradise New  Guinea  generally. 

Jobi  Bird  of  Paradise Island  of  Jobi. 

King  Bird  of  Paradise New  Guinea. 

Magnificent  Bird  of  Paradise New  Guinea. 

Impeyan  Pheasant Nepal  and  India. 

Tragopan  Pheasant Nepal  and  India. 

Argus  Pheasant Malay  Peninsula,  Borneo. 

Silver  Pheasant Burma  and  China. 

Golden  Pheasant China. 

Jungle  Cock East  Indies  and  Burma. 

Peacock East  Indies  and  India. 

Condor South  America. 

Vultures,  generally Where  not  protected. 

Eagles,  generally All  unprotected  regions. 

Hawks,  generally All  unprotected  regions. 

Crowned  Pigeon,  two  species New  Guinea. 

"  Choncas  " Locality  unknown. 

Pitta East  Indies. 

Magpie Europe. 

Touracou,  or  Plantain-Eater Africa. 

Velvet  Birds Locality  uncertain. 

"  Grives  " Locality  uncertain. 

Mannikin South  America. 

Green  Parrot  (now  protected) India. 

"  Dominos  "  (Sooty  Tern) Tropical  Coasts  and  Islands. 

Garnet  Tanager South  America. 

Grebe All  unprotected  regions. 

Green  Merle Locality  uncertain. 

"  Horphang" Locality  uncertain. 

Rhea South  America. 


120  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

"  Sixplet " Locality  uncertain. 

Starling Europe. 

Tetras Locality  not  determined. 

Emerald-Breasted  Hummingbird .  .  .  West  Indies,  Cent,  and  S.  America. 

Blue-Throated  Hummingbird West  Indies,  Cent,  and  S.  America. 

Amethyst  Hummingbird West  Indies,  Cent,  and  S.  America. 

Resplendent  Trogon,  several  species .  Central  America. 

Cock-of-the-Rock South  America. 

Macaw South  America. 

Toucan South  America. 

Emu Australia. 

Sun-Bird East  Indies. 

Owl All  unprotected  regions. 

Kingfisher All  unprotected  regions. 

Jabiru  Stork South  America. 

Albatross All  unprotected  regions. 

Tern,  all  species All  unprotected  regions. 

Gull,  all  species All  unprotected  regions. 

In  order  to  throw  a  spot-light  on  the  most  recent  transactions  in  the 
London  wild-birds'-plumage  market,  and  to  furnish  a  clear  idea  of  what 
is  to-day  going  on  in  London,  Paris,  Berlin  and  Amsterdam,  I  will  set 
out  in  some  detail  the  report  of  an  agent  whom  I  engaged  to  ascertain 
the  London  dealings  in  the  plumage  of  wild  birds  that  were  killed  espe- 
cially to  furnish  that  plumage.  As  one  item,  let  us  take  the  sales  in 
London  in  February,  May  and  October,  1911,  because  they  bring  the 
subject  well  down  to  date.     My  agent's  explanatory  note  is  as  follows: 

"These  three  sales  represent  six  months.  Very  nearly  double  this 
quantity  is  sold  by  these  four  firms  in  a  year.  We  must  also  take  into 
consideration  that  all  the  feathers  are  not  brought  to  the  London  mar- 
ket, and  that  very  large  shipments  are  also  made  direct  to  the  raw-feather 
dealers  and  manufacturers  of  Paris  and  Berlin,  and  that  Amsterdam  also 
gets  large  quantities  from  the  West  Indies.  For  your  purpose,  I  report  upon 
three  sales,  at  different  periods  of  the  year  1911,  and  as  those  sales  do  not 
vary  much,  you  will  be  able  to  judge  the  consumption  of  birds  in  a  year." 

The  "aigrettes  "  of  the  feather  trade  come  from  egrets,  and,  being  very 
light,  it  requires  the  death  of  several  birds  to  jdeld  one  ounce.  In  many 
catalogues,  the  word  "albatross"  stands  for  the  jabiru,  a  nearly-exter- 
minated species  of  giant  stork,  inhabiting  South  America.  "  Rhea  "  often 
stands  for  vulture  plumage. 

If  the  feather  dealers  had  deliberately  attempted  to  form  an  educa- 
tional list  of  the  most  beautiful  and  the  most  interesting  birds  of  the 
world,  they  could  hardly  have  done  better  than  they  have  done  in  the 
above  list.  If  it  were  in  my  power  to  show  the  reader  a  colored  plate 
of  each  species  now  being  exterminated  by  the  feather  trade,  he  would 
be  startled  by  the  exhibit.  That  the  very  choicest  birds  of  the  whole 
avian  world  should  be  thus  blotted  out  at  the  behest  of  vain  and  heart- 
less women  is  a  shame,  a  disgrace  and  world-wide  loss. 


EXTERMINATION   FOR    WOMEN'S  HATS 


121 


LONDON  FEATHER  SALE  OF  FEBRUARY,  1911 


Sold  by  Hale  &  Sons 

Aigrettes 3,069  ounces 

Herons 960      " 

Birds  of  Paradise 1,920  skins 

Sold  by  Figgis  &  Co. 

Aigrettes 421  ounces 

Herons 103      " 

Paradise 414  skins 

Eagles 2,600     " 

Condors 1,580     " 

Bustards 2,400     " 

LONDON   FEATHER   vSALE 
Sold  by  Hale  &  Sons 

Aigrettes 1,390  ounces 

Herons 178      " 

Paradise 1,686  skins 

Red  Ibis 868     " 

Junglecocks 1,550     " 

Parrots 1,700     " 

Herons 500     " 


Sold  by  Dalton  &  Young 

Aigrettes 1,606  ounces 

Herons 250      " 

Paradise 4,330  bodies 

Sold  by  Lewis  &  Peat 

Aigrettes 1,250  ounces 

Paradise 362  skins 

Eagles 384     " 

Trogons 206     ' ' 

Hummingbirds 24,800     " 

OF    MAY,  1911 

Sold  by  Dalton  &  Young 

Aigrettes 2,921  ounces 

Herons 254      " 

Paradise 5,303  skins 

Golden  Pheasants 1,000     " 


Sold  by  Figgis  &  Co. 

Aigrettes 201  ounces 

Herons 248      " 

Paradise 546  skins 

Falcons,  Hawks 1,500     " 


Sold  by  Lewis  &  Peat 

Aigrettes 590 

Herons 190 

Paradise 60 

Trogons 348 

Hummingbirds 6,250 


LONDON    FEATHER    SALE    OF   OCTOBER,    1911 


Sold  by  Hale  &  Sons 

Aigrettes 1,020  ounces 

Paradise 2,209  skins 

Hummingbirds 10,040     " 

Bustard 28,000  quills 

Sold  by  Figgis  &  Co. 

Aigrettes 1,501  ounces 

Herons 140      " 

Paradise 318  skins 


Sold  by  Dalton  Sf  Young 

Aigrettes 5,879 

Heron 1,608 

Paradise 2,850 

Condors 1,500 

Eagles 1,900 

Sold  by  Lewis  &  Peat 

Aigrettes 1,680 

Herons 400 

Birds  of  Paradise 700 


ounces 
skins 


ounces 
skins 


ounces 
skins 


If  I  am  correctly  informed,  the  London  feather  trade  admits  that  it 
requires  six  egrets  to  yield  one  "ounce"  of  aigrette  plumes.  This  being 
the  case,  the  21,528  ounces  sold  as  above  stand  for  129,168  egrets  killed 
for  nine  months'  supply  of  egret  plumes,  for  London  alone. 

The  total  number  of  bird  corpses  auctioned  during  these  three  sales 
is  as  follows : 

Aigrettes,  21,528  ounces  =  129,168  Egrets. 


Herons,        2,683 


13,598  Herons. 

20,698  Birds  of  Paradise. 

41,090  Hummingbirds. 

9,464  Eagles,  Condors,  etc. 

9,472  Other  Birds. 


Total  number  of  birds 223,490 


122  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  sales  listed  above  cover  the  trans- 
actions of  four  firms  only,  and  do  not  in  any  manner  take  into  account 
the  direct  importations  from  Paris,  Berlin  and  Amsterdam  of  manufac- 
turers and  other  dealers.  The  defenders  of  the  feather  trade  are  at  great 
pains  to  assure  the  world  that  in  the  monthly,  bi-monthly  and  quarterly 
sales,  feathers  often  appear  in  the  market  twice  in  the  same  year;  and  this 
statement  is  made  for  them  in  order  to  be  absolutely  fair.  Recent  ex- 
aminations of  the  plume  catalogues  for  an  entire  year,  marked  with  the 
price  paid  for  each  item,  reveals  very  few  which  are  blank,  indicating  no 
sale!  The  subtractions  of  the  duplicated  items  would  alter  the  result 
only  very  slightly. 

The  full  extent  of  England's  annual  consumption  of  the  plumage  of 
wild  birds  slaughtered  especially  for  the  trade  never  has  been  deter- 
mined. I  doubt  whether  it  is  possible  to  ascertain  it.  The  information 
that  we  have  is  so  fragmentary  that  in  all  probability  it  reflects  only  a 
small  portion  of  the  whole  truth,  but  for  all  that,  it  is  siifficient  to  prove 
the  case  of  the  Defenders  of  the  Birds  vs.  the  London  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce. 

IMPORTS  OF  FEATHERS  AND  DOWN  (ORNAMENTAL)  FOR  THE 

YEAR  1910 

Potmds.  Value. 

Venezuela 8,398  $191,058 

Brazil 787  5,999 

Japan 2,284  3,830 

China 6,329  16,308 

Tripoli 345  900 

Egypt 21,047  89,486 

Java,  Sumatra,  and  Borneo 15,703  186,504 

Cape  of  Good  Hope 709,406*  9,747,146 

British  India 18,359  22,137 

Hong-Kong 310  3,090 

British  West  Indies 30  97 

Other  British  Colonies 10,438  21,938 

*  Chiefly  Ostrich  feathers. 

The  above  does  not  take  into  account  the  feathers  from  game  birds 
received  in  England  from  France,  Germany,  Austria-Hungar^^  Belgium 
and  the  Netherlands. 

As  a  final  side-light  on  the  quantity  of  egret  and  heron  plumes  offered 
and  sold  in  London  during  the  twelve  months  ending  in  April,  1912,  we 
ofi'er  ths  following  exhibit : 

"OSPREY"  FEATHERS  (EGRET  AND  HERON  PLUMES)  SOLD  IN  LONDON 

DURING  THE  YEAR  ENDING  APRIL.  1912 

Offered.  Sold. 

Venezuelan,  long  and  medium 11,617  ouncet;  7,072  ounces 

Venezuelan,  mixed  Heron 4,043      "  2,539      " 

Brazilian 3,335      "  1,810      " 

Chinese 641       "  576      " 

19,636  ounces         11,997  ounces 
Birds  of  Paradise,  plumes  (2  plumes  =  1 

bird) 29,385  24,579 


BEAUTIFUL  AND  CURIOUS  BIRDS  NOW  BEING  DESTROYED 
FOR  THE  FEATHER  TRADE— (III) 
Griffon  Vulture  r     ^ 

Herring  Gull  Condor 

Jabiru  Emeu 

Indian  Adjutant 


124  OUR  VANISHING    WILD   LIFh 

Under  the  head  of  "Hummingbirds  Not  Wanted,"  Mr.  Downhamis 
at  great  pains  to  convey*  the  distinct  impression  that  to-day  humming- 
birds are  scorned  by  the  feather  trade,  and  the  demand  for  them  is  dead. 
/  believed  him — until  my  agent  turned  in  the  following  statement : 

Hummingbirds  sold  by  Lewis  &  Peat,  London,  February,  1911 .  .  .  .24,800 

Hummingbirds  sold  by  Lewis  &  Peat,  London,  May,  1911 6,250 

Hummingbirds  sold  by  Hale  &  Sons,  London,  October,  1911 10,040 

Total 41,090 

It  is  useless  for  anyone  to  assert  that  these  birds  were  merely 
"offered,"  and  not  actually  sold,  as  Mr.  Downham  so  laboriously  ex- 
plains is  the  regular  course  with  hummingbird  skins ;  for  that  will  deceive 
no  intelligent  person.  The  statement  published  above  comes  to  me 
direct,  from  an  absolutely  competent  and  reliable  source. 

Undoubtedly  the  friends  of  birds,  and  likewise  their  enemies,  will  be 
interested  in  the  prices  at  which  the  skins  of  the  most  beautiful  birds  of 
the  world  are  sold  in  London,  prior  to  their  annihilation  by  the  feather 
industry.  I  submit  the  following  exhibit,  copied  from  the  circular  of 
Messrs.  Lewis  &  Peat.      It  is  at  least  of  academic  interest. 

PRICES  OF  RARE  AND  BEAUTIFUL  BIRD  SKINS  IN  LONDON 

Condor  skins $3.50  to  $5.75 

Condor  wing  feathers,  each 05 

Impeyan  Pheasant 66  "  2.50 

Argus  Pheasant 3.60  "  3.85 

Tragopan  Pheasant 2.70 

Silver  Pheasant 3.50 

Golden  Pheasant 34  "  .46 

Greater  Bird  of  Paradise: 

Light  Plumes:  Medium  to  giants 10.32  "  21.00 

Medium  to  long,  worn 7.20  "  13.80 

Slight  def.  and  plucked 2.40  "  6.72 

Dark  Plumes:  Medium  to  good  long 7.20  "  24.60 

12-Wired  Bird  of  Paradise 1.44  "  1.80 

Rubra  Bird  of  Paradise 2.50 

Rifie  Bird  of  Paradise 1.14  "  1.38 

King  Bird  of  Paradise 2.40 

"Green"  Bird  of  Paradise 38  "  .44 

East  Indian  Kingfisher 06  "  .07 

East  Indian  Parrots .03 

Peacock  Necks,  gold  and  blue 24  "  .66 

Peacock  Necks,  blue  and  green    .36 

Scarlet  Ibis 14  "  .24 

Toucan  breasts 22  "  .26 

Red  Tanagers .09 

Orange  Oriels .05 

Indian  Crows'  breasts .13 

Indian  lays .04 

Amethyst  Hummingbirds .01 J4 

Hummingbird,  various 3/16  of     .01   "  .02 

Hummingbird,  others 1/32  of     .01   "  .01 

Egret  ("Osprey")  skins 1.08  "  2.78 

♦"The  Feather  Trade,"  by  C.  F.  Downham,  p.  63-4. 


EXTERMINATION    FOR    WOMEN'S  HATS  125 

Egret  ("Osprey")  skins,  long 2.40 

Vulture  feathers,  per  pound 36  "     4.56 

Eagle,  wing  feathers,  bundles  of  100 .09 

Hawk,  wing  feathers,  bundles  of  100 .12 

Mandarin  I^ucks,  per  skin .15 

Pheasant  tail  feathers,  per  pound l.SO 

Crown  Pigeon  heads,  Victoria 1.68  "     2.50 

Crown  Pigeon  heads,  Coronatus 84  "     1.20 

Emu  skins 4.56  "     4.80 

Cassowary  plumes,  per  ounce 3.48 

Swan  skins 72  "       .74 

Kingfisher  skins 07  "       .09 

African  Golden  Cuckoo 1.68 

Many  thouj^hts  are  suggested  by  these  London  lists  of  l:)ird  slaughter 
and  loot. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  breast  of  the  grebe  has  almost  wholly  dis- 
appeared from  the  feather  market  and  from  women's  hats.  The  reason 
is  that  there  are  no  longer  enough  birds  of  that  group  to  hold  a  place  in 
the  London  market !  Few  indeed  are  the  Americans  who  know  that  from 
1900  to  1908  the  lake  region  of  southern  Oregon  was  the  scene  of  the 
slaughter  of  uncountable  thousands  of  those  birds,  which  continued  until 
the  grebes  were  almost  exterminated. 

When  the  wonderful  lyre-bird  of  Australia  had  been  almost  extermi- 
nated for  its  tail  feathers,  its  open  slaughter  was  stopped  by  law,  and  a 
heavy  fine  was  imposed  on  exportation,  amounting,  I  have  been  told,  to 
$250  for  each  oifense.  My  latest  news  of  the  lyre-bird  was  of  the 
surreptitious  exportation  of  200  skins  to  the  London  feather  market. 

In  India,  the  smuggling  outward  of  the  skins  of  protected  birds  is 
constantly  going  on.  Occasionally  an  exoorter  is  caught  and  fined ;  but 
that  does  not  stop  the  traffic. 

Bird-lovers  must  now  bid  farewell  forever  to  all  the  birds  of  paradise. 
Nothing  but  the  legal  closing  of  the  world's  markets  against  their  plumes 
and  skins  can  save  any  of  them.  They  never  were  numerous;  nor  does 
any  species  range  over  a  wide  area.  They  are  strictly  insular,  and  the  is- 
land homes  of  some  of  them  are  very  small.  Take  the  great  bird  of  para- 
dise (Paradisea  apoda)  as  an  illustration.  On  Oct.  2,  1912,  at  IndianapoHs, 
Indiana,  a  city  near  the  center  of  the  United  States,  in  three  show-windows 
within  100  feet  of  the  headquarters  of  the  Fourth  National  Conservation 
Congress,  I  counted  11  stuffed  heads  and  11  complete  sets  of  plumes  of 
this  bird,  displayed  for  sale.  The  prices  ranged  from  $30  to  $47.50  each! 
And  while  I  looked,  a  large  lady  approached,  pointed  her  finger  at  the 
remains  of  a  greater  bird  of  paradise,  and  with  grim  determination,  said 
to  her  shopping  companion :  "There!  I  want  one  o'  them,  an'  I'm 
agoin'  to  have  it,  too!" 

Says  Mr.  James  Buckland  in  "Pros  and  Cons  of  the  Plumage  Bill": 

'  'Mr  Goodfellow  has  returned  within  the  last  few  weeks  from  a  second 
expedition  to  new  Guinea.  *  *  One  can  now  walk,  he  states,  miles 
and  miles  through  the  former  haunts  of  these  birds  [of  paradise]  without 


126  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

seeing  or  hearing  even  the  commonest  species.  When  I  reflect  on  this 
sacrilege,  I  am  lost  in  wonder  at  the  apathy  of  the  British  public." 

Mr.  Carl  Hagenbeck  wrote  me  only  three  months  ago  that  "the 
condors  of  the  Andes  are  all  being  exterminated  for  their  feathers,  and 
these  birds  are  now  very  difficult  to  obtain." 

The  egret  and  heron  plumes,  known  under  the  trade  name  of  "  osprey, 
etc.,  feathers,"  form  by  far  the  most  important  item  in  each  feather  sale. 
There  are  fifteen  grades!  They  are  sold  by  the  ounce,  and  the  prices 
range  all  the  way  from  twenty-eight  cents  per  ounce  for  "mixed  heron" 
to  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  shillings  ($45.60)  per  ounce  for  the  best 
Brazilian  "short  selected,"  on  February  7,  1912!  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
in  Philadelphia  the  prices  of  finished  aigrettes,  ready  to  be  worn,  runs 
from  $20  to  $125! 

The  plumes  that  run  up  into  the  big  figures  are  the  "short  selected" 
coming  from  the  followmg  localities,  and  quoted  at  the  prices  set  down 
here  in  shillings  and  pence.  Count  the  shilling  at  twenty-four  cents, 
United  States  money. 

PRICES  OF  "SHORT  SELECTED"  EGRET  AND  HERON  PLUMES,  IN 
LONDON  ON  FEBRUARY  7,  1912 

(Lewis  &  Peat's  List) 

East  Indies per  ounce,   117/6  to  207/6  =  $49.80  max. 

Rangoon "  "       150/0  "  192/6  =     46.20     " 

China "  "       130/0  "  245/0  =     58.80     " 

Brazil  "  "       200/0  "  225/0  =     54.00     " 

Venezuela "  "       165/0  "  222/6  =     53.40     " 

The  total  offering  of  these  "short  selected"  plumes  in  December 
1911,  was  689  ounces,  and  in  February,  1912,  it  was  230  ounces. 

Now  with  these  enormous  prices  prevailing,  is  it  any  wonder  that 
the  egrets  and  herons  are  being  relentlessly  pursued  to  the  uttermost 
ends  of  the  earth?  I  think  that  any  man  who  really  knows  the  habits 
of  egrets  and  herons,  and  the  total  impossibility  of  any  quantity  of  their 
shed  feathers  being  picked  up  in  a  marketable  state,  must  know  in  his 
heart  that  if  the  London  and  continental  feather  markets  keep  open  a 
few  years  longer,  every  species  that  furnishes  "short  selected"  plumes 
will  be  utterly  exterminated  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Let  the  English  people  make  no  mistake  about  this,  nor  be  fooled  by 
any  fairy  tales  of  the  feather  trade  about  Venezuelan  "garceros,"  and 
vast  quantities  of  valuable  plumes  picked  off  the  bushes  and  out  of  the 
mud.  Those  carefully  concocted  egret-farm  stories  make  lovely  reading, 
but  the  reader  who  examines  the  evidence  will  soon  decide  the  extent  of 
their  truthfulness.  I  think  that  they  contain  not  even  ten  per  cent  of 
truth ;  and  I  shall  not  rest  until  the  stories  of  Leon  Laglaize  and  Mayeul 
Grisol  have  been  put  to  the  test  in  the  regions  where  they  originated. 

h  Jew  plumes  may  be  picked  out  of  the  jungle,  yes;  but  as  for  any 
commercial  quantity,  it  is  at  present  beyond  belief.  Besides,  we  have 
direct,  eye-witness  testimony  to  the  contrary. 


EXTERMINATION   FOR   WOMEN'S  HATS  127 

It  must  not  be  inferred  that  the  friends  of  birds  in  England  have 
been  idle  or  silent  in  the  presence  of  the  London  feather  trade.  On  the 
contrary,  the  Royal  Society  for  the  Protection  of  Wild  Birds  and  Mr. 
James  Buckland  have  so  strongly  attacked  the  feather  industry  that 
the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce  has  felt  called  upon  to  come  to  its 
rescue.  Mr.  Buckland,  on  his  own  individual  account,  has  done  yeoman 
service  to  the  cause,  and  his  devotion  to  the  birds,  and  his  tireless 
energy,  are  both  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  praise  in  words.  At  the 
last  moment  before  going  to  press  I  learn  that  the  birds'-plumage  bill 
has  achieved  the  triumph  of  a  "first  reading"  in  Parliament,  which  looks 
as  if  success  is  at  last  in  sight.  The  powerful  pamphlet  "that  he  has 
written,  published  and  circulated  at  his  own  expense,  entitled  "Pros  and 
Cons  of  the  Plumage  Bill,"  is  a  splendid  effort.  What  a  pity  it  is  that 
more  individuals  are  not  similarly  inspired  to  make  independent  effort  in 
the  protection  cause!  But,  strange  to  say,  few  indeed  are  the  men  who 
have  either  the  nerve  or  the  ability  to  "go  it  alone." 

On  the  introduction  in  Parliament  of  the  bill  to  save  the  birds  from 
the  feather  trade,  it  was  opposed  (through  the  efforts  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce),  on  the  ground  that  if  any  bill  against  the  sale  of  plumes 
should  pass,  and  plumes  could  not  be  sold,  the  London  business  in  wild- 
bird  skins  and  feathers  "would  immediately  be  transferred  to  the  con- 
tinent!" 

In  the  face  of  that  devastating  and  altogether  horrible  prospect,  and 
because  the  London  feather  dealers  "need  the  money,"  the  bill  was  at 
first  defeated — to  the  great  joy  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  and  Mr. 
Downham;  but  the  cause  of  birds  will  win  in  the  end,  because  it  is  Right. 

The  feather  dealers  have  been  shrewdly  active  in  the  defense  of  their 
trade,  and  the  methods  they  have  employed  for  influencing  public  opinion 
hav  ^  quite  outshone  those  put  forth  by  their  brethren  in  America.  I  have 
before  me  a  copy  of  a  booklet  bearing  the  name  of  Mr.  C.  F.  Downham 
as  the  author,  and  the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce  has  loaned  its 
good  name  as  publisher.  Altogether  it  is  a  very  shrewd  piece  of  work, 
even  though  its  arguments  in  justification  of  bird  slaughter  for  the 
feather  market  are  too  absurd  and  weak  for  serious  consideration. 

The  chief  burden  of  the  defender  of  bird  slaughter  for  millinery  pur- 
poses is  on  account  of  the  destruction  of  egrets  and  herons,  but  partic- 
ularly the  former.  To  offset  as  far  as  possible  the  absolutely  true  charge 
that  egrets  bear  their  best  plumes  in  their  breeding  season,  when  the 
helpless  young  are  in  the  nest  and  the  parent  birds  must  be  killed 
to  obtain  the  plumes,  the  feather  trade  has  obtained  from  three  French- 
men— Leon  Laglaize,  Mayeul  Grisol,  and  F.  Geay — a  beautiful  and 
plausible  story  to  the  effect  that  in  Venezuela  the  enormous  output  of 
egret  plumes  has  been  obtained  by  picking  up,  off  the  bushes  and  out  of 
the  water  and  mud,  the  shed  feathers  of  those  birds!  According  to  the  story, 
Venezuela  is  full  of  egret  farms,  called  "garceros," — where  the  birds 
breed  and  moult  under  strict  supervision,  and  kindly  drop  their  feathers 
in  such  places  that  it  is  possible  to  find  them,  and  to  pick  them  up,  in  a 


128 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


CASTLS 

STREET 


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THE  FIGHT  IN  ENGLAND  AGAINST  THE  USE  OF  WILD  BIRD'S  PLUMAGE 
IN  THE  MILLINERY  TRADE 

Sandwich-men  Employed  by  the  Royal  Society  for  the  Protection  of  Birds, 
that  Patroled  London  Streets  in  July,  1911. 

high  state  of  preservation!  And  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  it  is  i.hese 
very  Venezuelan  picked-up  feathers  that  command  in  London  the  high 
price  of  ^44  per  ounce. 

Mr.  Laglaize  is  especially  exploited  by  Mr.  Downham,  as  a  French 
traveler  of  high  standing,  and  well  known  in  the  zoological  museums  of 
France;  but,  sad  to  say,  when  Prof.  Henry  Fairfield  Osborn  cabled  to  the 
Museum  of  Natural  History  in  Paris,  inquiring  about  Mr.  Laglaize,  the 
cable  flashed  back  the  one  sad  word:    " Inconnu!"  (Unknown!) 

I  think  it  entirely  possible  that  enough  shed  feathers  have  been  picked 
up  in  the  reeking  swamps  of  Venezuela,  on  the  upper  tributaries  of  the 
Orinoco,  to  afiEord  an  excuse  for  the  beautiful  story  of  Mr.  Laglaize.  Any 
shrewd  individual  with  money,  and  the  influence  that  money  secures, 
couM  put  up  just  such  a  "plant"  as  I  firmly  believe  has  been  put  up  by 
some  one  in  Venezuela.  I  will  guarantee  that  I  could  accomplish  such 
a  job  in  Venezuela  or  Brazil,  in  four  months'  time,  at  an  expense  not 
exceeding  one  thousand  dollars. 

That  the  great  supply  of  immaculately  perfect  egret  plumes  that 
annually  come  out  of  Venezuela  could  by  any  possibility  be  picked  up 
in   the  swamps  where  they   were  shed  and  dropped  by  the  egrets,  is 


EXTERMINATION   FOR    WOMEN'S  HATS  129 

entirely  preposterous  and  incredible.  The  whole  proposition  is  de- 
nounced by  several  men  of  standing  and  experience,  none  of  whom  are 
''inconnu." 

As  a  sweeping  refutation  of  the  fantastic  statements  regarding 
"garceros,"  published  by  Mr.  Downham  as  coming  from  Messrs.  La- 
glaize,  Grisol  and  Geay,  I  offer  the  written  testimony  of  an  American 
gentleman  who  at  this  moment  owns  and  maintains  within  a  few  yards 
of  his  residence  a  large  preserve  of  snowy  egrets  and  herons,  the  former 
representing  the  species  which  furnishes  egret  plumes  exactly  similar  to 
those  shipped  from  Venezuela  and  Brazil.  If  the  testimony  of  Mr. 
Mcllhenny  is  not  sufficient  to  stamp  the  statements  of  the  three  French- 
men quoted  by  Mr.  Downham  as  absolute  and  thoroughly  misleading 
falsehoods,  then  there  is  no  such  thing  in  this  world  as  evidence.  I  sug- 
gest a  perusal  of  the  statements  of  the  three  Frenchmen  who  are  quoted 
with  such  confidence  by  Mr.  Downham  and  published  by  the  Hon. 
Chamber  of  Commerce  at  London,  and  then  a  careful  reading  of  the 
following  letter  : 

Avery  Island,  La.,  June  17,  1912. 
Dear  Mr.  Hornaday: — 

I  have  before  me  your  letter  of  June  8th,  asking  for  information  as  to  whether  or  no 
egrets  shed  their  plumes  at  their  nesting  places  in  sufficient  quantities  to  enable  them 
to  be  gathered  commercially.  I  most  emphatically  wish  to  state  that  it  is  impossible 
to  gather  at  the  nesting  places  of  these  birds  any  quantity  of  their  plumes.  I  have 
nesting  within  50  yards  of  where  I  am  now  sitting  dictating  this  letter  not  less  than  20,000 
pairs  of  the  various  species  of  herons  and  egrets,  and  there  are  fully  2, .500  pairs  of  snowy 
herons  nesting  within  my  preserve. 

During  the  nesting  season,  which  covers  the  months  of  April,  May  and  June,  I  am 
through  this  heronry  in  a  small  canoe  almost  every  day,  and  often  twice  a  day.  I  have 
had  these  herons  under  my  close  inspection  for  the  past  17  years,  and  I  have  not  in  any 
one  season  picked  up  or  seen  more  than  half  a  dozen  discarded  plumes.  Such  plumes 
as  I  have  picked  up,  I  have  kept  on  my  desk,  and  given  to  the  people  who  were  inter- 
ested. I  remember  that  last  year  I  picked  up  four  plumes  of  the  snowy  heron  that 
were  in  one  bunch.     I  think  these  must  have  been  plucked  out  by  the  birds  fighting. 

This  year  I  have  found  only  one  plume  so  far.  I  enclose  it  herewith.  You  will  notice 
that  it  is  one  of  the  shorter  plumes,  and  is  badly  worn  at  the  end,  as  have  been  all  the 
plumes  which  I  have  picked  up  in  my  heronry. 

I  am  positive  that  it  is  not  possible  for  natural  shed  plumes  to  be  gathered  commer- 
ciall}^  I  have  a  number  of  times  talked  with  plume  hunters  from  Venezuela  and  other 
South  American  countries,  and  I  have  never  heard  of  any  egret  feathers  being  gathered 
by  their  being  picked  up  after  the  birds  have  shed  them. 

I  have  heard  of  a  number  of  heronries  in  South  America  that  are  protected  by  the 
land  owners  for  the  purpose  of  gathering  a  yearly  crop  of  egret  plumes,  but  this  crop  is 
gathered  always  by  shooting  a  certain  percentage  of  the  birds.  This  shooting  is  done 
by  experts  with  22-calibre  rifles,  and  does  not  materially  disturb  the  nesting  colony.  I 
have  known  of  two  men  who  have  been  engaged  in  killing  the  birds  on  large  estates  in 
South  America,  who  were  paid  regular  salaries  for  their  services  as  egret  hunters. 

Very  truly  yours. 

E.  A.  McIlhenny. 

I  am  more  than  willing  to  set  the  above  against  the  fairy  tale  of 
Mr.  Laglaize. 

Here  is  the  testimony  of  A.  H.  Meyer,  an  ex-plume-hunter,  who  for 
nine  years  worked  in  Venezuela.     His  sworn  testimony  was  laid  before 


130  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  New  York,  in  1911,  when  the  New  York 
Milliners'  Association  was  frantically  endeavoring  to  secure  the  repeal 
of  the  splendid  Dutcher  law.  This  witness  was  produced  by  the  National 
Association  of  Audubon  Societies. 

"My  attention  has  been  called  to  the  fact  that  certain  commercial 
interests  in  this  city  are  circulating  stories  in  the  newspapers  and  else- 
where to  the  effect  that  the  aigrettes  used  in  the  millinery  trade  come 
chiefly  from  Venezuela,  where  they  are  gathered  from  the  ground  in  the 
large  garceros,  or  breeding-colonies,  of  white  herons. 

"I  wish  to  state  that  I  have  personally  engaged  in  the  work  of 
collecting  the  plumes  of  these  birds  in  Venezuela.  This  was  my  business 
for  the  years  1896  to  1905,  inclusive.  I  am  thoroughly  conversant  with 
the  methods  employed  in  gathering  egret  and  snowy  heron  plumes  in 
Venezuela,  and  I  wish  to  give  the  following  statement  regarding  the 
practices  employed  in  procuring  these  feather: " 

"The  birds  gather  in  large  colonies  to  rear  tneir  young.  They  have 
the  plumes  only  during  the  mating  and  nesting  season.  After  the  period 
when  they  are  employed  in  caring  for  their  young,  it  is  found  that  the 
plumes  are  virtually  of  no  commercial  value,  because  of  the  worn  and 
frayed  condition  to  which  they  have  been  reduced.  It  is  the  custom  in 
Venezuela  to  shoot  the  birds  while  the  young  are  in  the  nests.  A  few 
feathers  of  the  large  white  heron  (American  egret),  known  as  the  Garza 
blanca,  can  be  picked  up  of  a  morning  about  their  breeding  places,  but 
these  are  of  small  value  and  are  known  as  "dead  feathers."  They  are 
worth  locally  not  over  three  dollars  an  ounce;  while  the  feathers  taken 
from  the  bird,  known  as  "live  feathers,"  are  worth  fifteen  dollars  an 
ounce. 

"My  work  led  me  into  every  part  of  Venezuela  and  Colombia  where 
these  birds  are  to  be  found,  and  I  have  never  yet  found  or  heard  of  any 
garceros  that  were  guarded  for  the  purpose  of  simply  gathering  the 
feathers  from  the  ground.  No  such  condition  exists  in  Venezuela.  The 
story  is  absolutely  without  foundation,  in  my  opinion,  and  has  simply 
been  put  forward  for  commercial  purposes. 

"The  natives  of  the  country,  who  do  virtually  all  of  the  hunting  for 
feathers,  are  not  provident  in  their  nature,  and  their  practices  are  of  a 
most  cruel  and  brutal  nature.  I  have  seen  them_  frequently  pull  the 
plumes  from  wounded  birds,  leaving  the  crippled  birds  to  die  of  starva- 
tion, unable  to  respond  to  the  cries  of  their  young  in  the  nests  above, 
which  were  calling  for  food.  I  have  known  these  people  to  tie  and  prop 
up  wounded  egrets  on  the  marsh  where  they  would  attract  the  attention  of 
other  birds  flying  by.  These  decoys  they  keep  in  this  position  until  they  die 
of  their  wounds,  or  from  the  attacks  of  insects.  I  have  seen  the  terrible  red 
ants  of  that  country  actually  eating  out  the  eyes  of  these  wounded,  helpless 
birds  that  were  tied  up  by  the  plume-hunters.  I  could  write  you  many  pages 
of  the  horrors  practiced  in  gathering  aigrette  feathers  in  Venezuela  by 
the  natives  for  the  millinery  trade  of  Paris  and  New  York. 


EXTERMINATION  FOR    WOMEN'S   HATS  131 

' '  To  illustrate  the  comparatively  small  number  of  dead  feathers  which 
are  collected,  I  will  mention  that  in  one  year  I  and  my  associates  shipped 
to  New  York  eighty  pounds  of  the  plumes  of  the  large  heron  and 
twelve  pounds  of  the  little  recurved  plumes  of  the  snowy  heron.  In  this 
whole  lot  there  were  not  over  five  pounds  of  plumes  that  had  been 
gathered  from  the  ground — and  these  were  of  little  value.  The  plume- 
birds  have  been  nearly  exterminated  in  the  United  States  and  Mexico, 
and  the  same  condition  of  affairs  will  soon  exist  in  tropical  America. 
This  extermination  will  come  about  because  of  the  fact  that  the  young 
are  left  to  starve  in  the  nest  when  the  old  birds  are  killed,  any  other 
statement  made  by  interested  parties  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

"I  am  so  incensed  at  the  ridiculously  absurd  and  misleading  stories 
that  are  being  published  on  this  question  that  I  want  to  give  you  this 
letter,  and,  before  delivering  it  to  you,  shall  take  oath  to  its  truthfulness." 

Here  is  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Caspar  Whitney,  of  New  York,  formerly 
editor  of  Outing  Magazine  and  Outdoor  America: 

"During  extended  travel  throughout  South  America,  from  1903  to 
1907,  inclusive,  I  journeyed,  on  three  separate  occasions,  by  canoe  (1904- 
1907),  on  the  Lower  Orinoco  and  Apure  rivers  and  their  tributaries. 
This  is  the  region,  so  far  as  Venezuela  is  concerned,  in  which  is  the 
greatest  slaughter  of  white  herons  for  their  plumage,  or  more  specifically 
for  the  marital  plumes,  which  are  carried  only  in  the  mating  and  breed- 
ing season,  and  are  known  in  the  millinery  trade  as  'aigrettes.' 

"There  is  literally  no  room  for  question.  The  snowy  herons  are 
killed  exactly  as  I  describe.  It  is  the  custom  of  all  those  who  hunt  for 
the  millinery  trade,  and  is  recognized  by  the  natives  as  the  usual  method. " 

Here  is  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Julian  A.  Dimock,  of  Peekamose,  N.  Y., 
the  famous  outdoor  photographer,  and  illustrator  of  "Florida  Enchant- 
ments"; 

"I  know  a  goodly  number  of  the  plume-hunters  of  Florida.  I  have 
camped  with  them,  and  talked  to  them.  I  have  heard  their  tales,  and 
even  full  accounts  of  the  '  shooting-up '  of  an  egret  rookery.  Never  has 
a  man  in  Florida  suggested  to  me  that  plumes  could  be  obtained  without 
killing  the  birds.  I  have  known  the  wardens,  and  have  visited  rookeries 
after  they  had  been  'shot-up,'  and  the  evidence  all  pointed  to  the  ever- 
lasting use  of  the  gun.  It  is  certainly  not  true  that  the  plumes  can  he 
obtained  without  killing  the  birds  bearing  them. 

"Nineteen  years  ago,  I  visited  the  Cuthbert  Rookery  with  one  of  the 
men  who  discovered  the  birds  nesting  in  that  lake.  He  and  his  partner 
had  sold  the  plumes  gathered  there  for  more  than  a  thousand  dollars. 
He  showed  me  how  they  hid  in  the  bushes  and  shot  the  birds.  He  even 
gave  me  a  chance  to  watch  him  kill  two  or  three  birds. 

' '  I  know  personally  the  man  chiefly  responsible  for  the  slaughter  of 
the  birds  at  Alligatcr  Bay.  He  laughed  at  the  idea  of  getting  plumes  with- 
out killing  the  birds!  I  well  know  the  man  who  shot  the  birds  up  Rogers 
River,  and  even  saw  some  of  the  empty  shells  left  on  the  ground  by  him. 


YOUNG  EGRETS,  UNABLE  TO  FLY,  STARVING 
The  Parent  Birds  had  Been  Killed  bv  Plume  Hunters 


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SNOWY  EGRET,  DEAD  ON  HER  NEST 

Wounded  in  the  Feeding-Grounds,  and  Came  Home  to  Die.     Photographed  in  a  Florida  Rookery 
Protected  by  the  National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies 


EXTERMINATION    FOR    WOMEN'S   HATS  133 

I  have  camped  with  Seminoles,  whites,  blacks,  outlaws,  and  those  within 
the  pale,  connected  with  plume-hunting,  and  all  tell  the  same  story :  The 
birds  are  shot  to  get  the  plumes.  The  evidence  of  my  own  eyes,  and  the 
action  of  the  birds  themselves,  convinces  me  that  there  is  not  a  shadow 
of  doubt  concerning  this  point." 

This  sworn  testimony  from  Mr.  T.  J.  Ashe,  of  Key  West,  Florida,  is 
very  direct  and  to  the  point : 

"I  have  seen  many  moiilted  and  dropped  feathers  from  wild  plumed 
birds.  I  have  never  seen  a  moulted  or  dropped  feather  that  was  fit  for 
anything.  It  is  the  exception  when  a  plumed  bird  drops  feathers  of  any 
value  while  in  flight.  Whatever  feathers  are  so  dropped  are  those  that 
are  frayed,  worn  out,  and  forced  out  by  the  process  of  moulting.  The 
moulting  season  is  not  during  the  hatching  season,  but  is  after  the 
hatching  season.  The  shedding,  or  moulting,  takes  place  once  a  year; 
and  during  this  moulting  season  the  feathers,  after  having  the  hard  usage 
of  the  year  from  wind,  rain  and  other  causes,  when  dropped  are  of 
absolutely  no  commercial  value." 

Mr.  Arthur  T.  Wayne,  of  Mount  Pleasant,  S.  C,  relates  in  sworn 
testimony  his  experience  in  attempting  to  secure  egret  plumes  without 
killing  the  birds: 

"It  is  utterly  impossible  to  get  fifty  egret  plumes  from  any  colony  of 
breeding  birds  without  shooting  the  birds.  Last  spring,  I  went  twice  a 
week  to  a  breeding  colony  of  American  and  snowy  egrets,  from  early  in 
April  until  June  8.  Despite  the  fact  that  I  covered  miles  of  territory  in 
a  boat,  I  picked  up  but  two  American  egret  plumes  (which  I  now  have) ; 
but  not  a  single  snowy  egret  plume  did  I  see,  nor  did  my  companion, 
who  accompanied  me  on  every  trip. 

"  I  saw  an  American  egret  plume  on  the  water,  and  left  it,  purposely, 
to  see  whether  it  would  sink  or  not.  Upon  visiting  the  place  a  few  day^; 
afterwards,  the  plume  was  not  in  evidence,  undoubtedly  having  sunl. . 
The  plumes  are  chiefly  shed  in  the  air  while  the  birds  are  going  to  o:- 
coming  from  their  breeding  grounds.  If  that  millinery  plume  law  is  re- 
pealed, the  fate  of  the  American  and  snowy  egrets  is  sealed,  for  the  few 
birds  that  remain  will  be  shot  to  the  very  last  one." 

Any  man  who  ever  has  been  in  an  egret  rookery  (and  I  have)  knows 
that  the  above  testimony  is  true!  The  French  story  of  the  beautiful 
and  smoothly-running  egret  farms  in  Venezuela  is  preposterous,  save  for 
a  mere  shadow  of  truth.  I  do  not  say  that  no  egret  plumes  could  be  picked 
up,  but  I  do  assert  that  the  total  quantity  obtainable  in  one  year  in  that 
way  would  be  utterly  trivial. 

No;  the  "ospre^^s"  of  the  British  feather  market  come  from  slaugh- 
tered egrets  and  herons,  killed  in  the  breeding  season.  Let  the  British 
public  and  the  British  Parliament  make  no  mistake  about  that.  If  they 
wish  the  trade  to  continue,  let  it  be  based  on  the  impregnable  ground 
that  the  merchants  want  the  money,  and  not  on  a  fantastic  dream  that 
is  too  silly  to  deceive  even  a  child  that  knows  birds. 


134  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

The  use  or  disuse  of  wild  birds'  plumage  as  millinery  ornaments  is 
another  of  those  wild-life  subjects  regarding  which  there  is  no  room  for 
argument.  To  assert  that  the  feather-dealers  want  the  business  for  the 
money  it  brings  them  is  not  argument!  We  have  seen  many  a  steam 
roller  go  over  Truth,  and  Right,  and  Justice,  by  main  strength  and  red- 
hot  power;  but  Truth  and  Right  refuse  to  stay  fiat  down.  There  is  on 
this  earth  not  one  wild-animal  species — mammal,  bird  or  reptile — that 
can  long  withstand  exploitation  for  commercial  purposes.  Even  the 
whales  of  the  deep  sea,  the  walrus  of  the  arctic  regions,  the  condors  of  the 
Andes  and  alligators  of  the  Everglade  morasses  are  no  exception  to  the 
universal  rule. 

In  Mr.  Downham's  book  there  is  much  fallacious  reasoning,  and  many 
conclusions  that  are  not  borne  out  by  the  facts.  For  example,  he  says 
that  no  species  of  bird  of  paradise  has  been  diminished  in  number  by 
slaughter  for  the  feather  trade;  that  Florida  still  contains  a  supply  of 
egrets;  that  the  decrease  in  bird  H'e  should  be  charged  to  the  spread 
of  cities,  towns  and  farms,  and  not  to  the  trade;  that  the  trade  was  "in 
no  way  responsible"  for  the  slaughter  of  three  hundred  thousand  gulls 
and  albatrosses  on  Laysan  Island ! 

I  have  space  to  notice  one  other  important  erroneous  conclusion  that 
Mr.  Downham  pubhshes  in  his  book,  on  page  105.     He  says: 

"The  destruction  of  birds  in  foreign  countries  is  something  that  no 
trade  can  direct  or  control." 

This  is  an  amazing  declaration;  and  absolutely  contrary  to  experience. 
Let  me  prove  what  I  say  by  a  fresh  and  incontestable  illustration : 

Prior  to  April,  1911,  when  Governor  Dix  signed  the  Bayne  law  against 
the  sale  of  wild  native  game  in  the  State  of  New  York,  Currituck  County, 
N.  C,  was  a  vast  slaughter-pen  for  wild  fowl.  No  power  or  persuasion 
had  availed  to  induce  the  people  of  North  Carolina  to  check,  or  regulate, 
or  in  any  manner  mitigate  that  slaughter  of  geese,  ducks  and  swans.  It 
was  estimated  that  two  hundred  thousand  wild  fowl  were  annually 
slaughtered  there. 

We  who  advocated  the  Bayne  law  said:  "Close  the  New  York  mar- 
kets against  Currituck  birds,  and  you  will  stop  a  great  deal  of  the 
slaughter." 

We  cleaned  our  Augean  stable.  The  greatest  game  market  in  America 
was  absolutely  closed. 

Last  winter  (1911)  the  annual  killing  of  wild  fowl  was  fully  fifty  per 
cent  less  than  during  previous  years.  In  one  small  town,  twenty  pro- 
fessional duck  shooters  went  entirely  out  of  business — because  they 
couldn't  sell  their  ducks!  The  dealers  refused  to  buy  them.  The  result 
was  exactly  what  we  predicted  it  would  be ;  and  this  year,  it  is  reported 
over  and  over  that  ducks  are  more  plentiful  in  New  England  than  they 
have  been  in  twenty  years  previously!  The  result  is  wonderful,  because 
,so  quick. 

Beyond  all  question,  the  feather  merchants  of  London,  Paris  and  Ber- 


EXTERMINATION   FOR   WOMEN'S  HATS 


135 


MISCELLANEOUS  BIRD  SKINS.  S   CENTS  EACH 
Purchased  by  the  New  York  Zoological  Society  from  the  Quarterly  Sale  in  London,  August,  1912 

lin  absolutely  control  the  bird-killers  of  Venezuela,  China,  New  Guinea. 
Mexico  and  South  America.  Let  the  word  go  forth  that  "the  trade" 
is  no  longer  permitted  to  buy  and  sell  egret  and  heron  plumes,  skins  of 
birds  of  paradise  and  condor  feathers,  and  presto !  the  killing  industry 
falls  dead  the  next  moment. 

Yes,  indeed,  members  of  the  British  Parliament:  it  is  easily  within 
your  power  to  wipe  out  at  a  single  stroke  fully  one-half  of  the  bird 
slaughter  for  fancy  feathers.  It  can  be  done  just  as  we  wiped  out  one- 
half  the  annual  duck  slaughter  in  wickedly-wasteful  North  Carolina ! 

The  feather  trade  absolutely  does  control  the  killing  situation!  Now, 
will  the  people  of  England  clean  house  by  controlling  the  feather  trade  ? 
If  a  hundred  species  of  the  most  beautiful  birds  of  the  world  must  be 
exterminated  for  the  feather  trade,  let  the  odium  rest  elsewhere  than  on 
the  people  of  England. 

The  bird-lovers  of  America  may  rest  assured  that  the  bird-lovers  of 
England — a  mighty  host — are  neither  careless  nor  indifferent  regarding 
the  wild-birds'  plumage  business.  On  the  contrary,  several  bills  have 
been  brought  before  ParHament  intended  to  regulate  or  prohibit  the 
traffic,  and  a  measure  of  vast  importance  to  the  birds  of  the  world  is  now 
before  the  House  of  Commons.  It  is  backed  by  Mr.  Percy  Alden,  M.P., 
by  the  Royal  Society  for  the  Protection  of  Birds,  by  the  Selbourne 
Society,  and  by  Mr.  James  Buckland— a  host  in  himself.  For  years  past 
that  splendidly-equipped   and  well-managed  Royal  Society  has  waged 


136  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

ceaseless  warfare  for  the  birds.  Its  activity  has  been  tremendous,  and 
its  membership  Hst  contains  many  of  the  finest  names  in  England.  The 
address  of  the  Honorary  Secretary,  Frank  E.  Lemon,  Esq.,  is  23  Queen 
Anne's  Gate,  London,  S.W. 

Naturally,  these  influences  are  opposed  by  the  Textile  Trade  Section  of 
the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce,  and  their  only  argument  consists 
of  the  plea  that  if  London  doesn't  get  the  money  out  of  the  feather  trade, 
the  Continent  will  get  it!  A  reasonable,  logical,  magnificent  and  con- 
vincing excuse  for  wholesale  bird  slaughter,  truly ! 

Mr.  Buckland  has  been  informed  from  the  Continent  that  the  people 
of  France,  Germany,  the  Netherlands  and  Belgium  are  waiting  and 
watching  to  see  what  England  is  going  to  do  with  the  question,  "To 
slaughter,  or  not  to  slaughter?"  For  England  has  no  monopoly  of  the 
birds'  plumage  trade,  not  by  any  means.  Says  Mr.  Buckland  ("Pros  and 
Cons  of  the  Plumage  Bill,"  page  17): 

"As  regards  the  vast  majority  of  fancy  feathers  used  in  millinery, 
the  Continent  receives  its  own  supplies.  The  feathers  of  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  albatrosses  which  are  killed  in  the  North  Pacific  all  go 
to  Paris.  Of  the  untold  thousands  of  'magpies,'  owls,  and  other  species 
which  come  from  Peru,  not  one  skin  or  feather  crosses  the  Channel.  The 
white  herons  of  the  Upper  Senegal  and  the  Niger  are  being  rapidly  ex- 
terminated at  the  instigation  of  the  feather  merchants,  but  not  one  of 
the  plumes  reaches  London.  Paris  receives  direct  a  large  supply  of 
aigrettes  from  South  America  and  elsewhere.  *  *  *  'y\iq  millions 
of  swallows  and  other  migratory  birds  which  are  killed  annually  as  they 
pass  through  Italy,  France  and  Spain  on  their  way  north,  supply  the 
millinery  trade  of  Europe  with  an  incredible  quantity  of  wings  and  other 
plumage,  but  none  of  it  is  distributed  from  London.  *  *  *  London, 
as  a  distributing  center,  has  no  monopoly  of  the  trade  in  raw  feathers." 

Mr.  Buckland's  green-covered  pamphlet  is  a  powerful  document,  and 
both  his  facts  and  his  conclusions  seem  to  be  unassailable.  The  author's 
address  is  Royal  Colonial  Institute,  Northumberland  Ave.,  London,  W.C. 

The  duty  of  the  civilized  nations  of  Europe  is  perfectly  plain.  The 
savage  and  bloody  business  in  feathers  torn  from  wild  birds  should  be 
stopped,  completely  and  forever.  If  the  commons  will  not  arise  and 
reform  the  odious  business  out  of  existence,  then  the  kings  and  queens 
and  presidents  should  do  their  plain  duty.  In  the  suppression  of  a  world 
crime  like  this  it  is  clearly  a  case  of  noblesse  oblige! 


CHAPTER  XIV.  (^ 

THE  BIRD   TRAGEDY  ON   LAYSAN  ISLAND 

This  chapter  is  a  curtain-dropper  to  the  preceding  chapter.  As  a 
clearly-cut,  concrete  case,  the  reader  will  find  it  unique  and  unsurpassed. 
It  should  be  of  lively  interest  to  every  American  because  the  tragedy 
occurred  on  American  territory. 

In  the  far-away  North  Pacific  Ocean,  about  seven  hundred  miles 
from  Honolulu  west-b'-north,  lies  the  small  island  of  Laysan.  It  is  level, 
sandy,  poorly  planted  by  nature,  and  barren  of  all  things  likely  to  enlist 
the  attention  of  predatory  man.  To  the  harassed  birds  of  mid-ocean,  it 
seemed  like  a  secure  haven,  and  for  ages  past  it  has  been  inhabited  only 
by  them.  There  several  species  of  sea  birds,  large  and  small,  have  found 
homes  and  breeding  places.  Until  1909,  the  inhabitants  consisted  of  the 
Laysan  albatross,  black-footed  albatross,  sooty  tern,  gray-backed  tern, 
noddy  tern,  Hawaiian  tern,  white  tern,  Bonin  petrel,  two  shearwaters, 
the  red-tailed  tropic  bird,  two  boobies  and  the  man-of-war  bird. 

Laysan  Island  is  two  miles  long  by  one  and  one-half  miles  broad,  and 
at  times  it  has  been  literally  covered  with  birds.  Its  bird  life  was  first 
brought  prominently  to  notice  in  1891,  bv  Henry  Palmer,  the  agent 
of  Hon.  Walter  Rothschild,  and  in  1902  and  1903  Walter  K.  Fisher  and 
W.  A.  Bryan  made  further  observations. 

Ever  since  1891  the  bird  life  on  Laysan  has  been  regarded  as  cue  of 
the  wonders  of  the  bird  world.  One  of  the  photographs  taken  prior  to 
1909  shows  a  vast  plain,  apparently  a  square  mile  in  area,  covered  and 
crowded  with  Laysan  albatrosses.  They  stand  there  on  the  level  sand, 
serene,  bulky  and  immaculate.  Thousands  of  birds  appear  in  one 
view — a  very  remarkable  sight. 

Naturally  man,  the  ever-greedy,  began  to  cast  about  for  ways  by 
which  to  convert  some  product  of  that  feathered  host  into  money.  At 
first  guano  and  eggs  were  collected.  A  tramway  was  laid  down  and 
small  box-cars  were  introduced,  in  which  the  collected  material  was 
piled  and  pushed  down  to  the  packing  place. 

For  several  years  this  went  on,  and  the  birds  themselves  were  not 
molested.  At  last,  however,  a  tentacle  of  the  feather-trade  octopus 
reached  out  to  Laysan.  In  an  evil  moment  in  the  spring  ^f  1909,  a 
predatory  individual  of  Honolulu  and  elsewhere,  named^Max  Schlerruner, 
decided  that  the  wings  of  those  albatross,  gulls  and  terns^duld  be  torn 
off  and  sent  to  Japan,   whence  they  would  undoubtedly  be  shipped  to 


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BIRD  TRAGEDY  ON  LAYS  AN  ISLAND 


139 


LAYSAN  ALBATROSS  ROOKERY.  AFTER  THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 
The  Same  Ground  as  Shown  in  the  Preceding  Picture,  Photographed  in  1911  by  Prof.  Homer  R.  Dill 


Paris,  the  special  inarket  for  the  wings  of  sea-birds  slaughtered  in  the 
North  Pacific. 

Schlemmer  the  Slaughterer  bought  a  cheap  vessel,  hired  twenty- 
three  phlegmatic  and  cold-blooded  Japanese  laborers,  and  organized  a 
raid  on  Laysan.  With  the  utmost  secrecy  he  sailed  from  Honolulu, 
landed  his  bird-killers  upon  the  sea-bird  wonderland,  and  turned  them 
loose  upon  the  birds. 

For  several  months  they  slaughtered  diligently  and  without  mercy. 
Apparently  it  was  the  ambition  of  Schlemmer  to  kill  every  bird  on  the 
island. 

By  the  time  the  bird-butchers  had  accumulated  between  three  and 
four  car-loads  of  wings,  and  the  carnage  was  half  finished,  William  A. 
Bryan,  Professor  of  Zoology  in  the  College  of  Honolulu,  heard  of  it  and 
promptly  wired  the  United  States  Government. 

Without  the  loss  of  a  moment  the  Secretary  of  the.  Navy  despatched 
the  revenue  cutter  Thetis  to  the  shambles  of  Laysan.  When  Captain 
Jacobs  arrived  he  found  that  in  round  numbers  about  three  hundred  thou- 
sand birds  had  been  destroyed,  and  all  that  remained  of  them  were 
several  acres  of  bones  and  dead  bodies,  and  about  three  carloads  of 
wings,  feathers  and  skins.  It  was  evident  that  Schlemmer's  intention 
was  to  kill  all  the  birds  on  the  island,  and  only  the  timely  arrival  of  the 
Thetis  frustrated  that  bloody  plan. 

The  twenty-three  Japanese  poachers  were  arrested  and  taken  to 
Honolulu  for  trial,  and  the  Thetis  also  brought  away  all  the  stolen  wings 
and  plumage  with  the  exception  of  one  shedful  of  wings  that  had  to  be 
left  behind  on  account  of  lack  of  carrying  space.     That  old  shed,  with 


\- 


140 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


ACRES  OP  GULL  AND  ALBATROSS  BONES 
Photographed  on  Laysan  Island  by  H.  R.  Dill,  1911 

one  end  torn  out,  and  supposed  to  contain  nearly  fifty  thousand  pairs  of 
wings,  was  photographed  by  Prof.  Dill  in  1911,  as  shown  herewith. 

Three  hundred  thousand  albatrosses,  gulls,  terns  and  other  birds 
were  butchered  to  make  a  Schlemmer  holiday !  Had  the  arrival  of  the 
Thetis  been  delayed,  it  is  reasonably  certain  that  every  bird  on  Laysan 
would  have  been  killed  to  satisfy  the  wolfish  rapacity  of  one  money- 
grubbing  white  man. 

In  1911,  the  Iowa  State  University  despatched  to  Laysan  a  scientific 
expedition  in  charge  of  Prof.  Homer  R.  Dill.  The  party  landed  on  the 
island  on  April  24  and  remained  until  June  5,  and  the  report  of  Pro- 
fessor Dill  (U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture)  is  consumedly  interesting 
to  the  friends  of  birds.  Here  is  what  he  has  said  regarding  the  evidences 
of  bird-slaughter : 

"Our  first  impression  of  Laysan  was  that  the  poachers  had  stripped 
the  place  of  bird  life.  An  area  of  over  300  acres  on  each  side  of  the 
buildings  was  apparently  abandoned.  Only  the  shearwaters  moaning 
in  their  burrows,  the  little  wingless  rail  skulking  from  one  grass  tussock 
to  another,  and  the  saucy  finch  remained.  It  is  an  excellent  example 
of  what  Prof.  Nutting  calls  the  survival  of  the  inconspicuous. 

"Here  on  every  side  are  bones  bleaching  in  the  sun,  showing  where 
the  poachers  had  piled  the  bodies  of  the  birds  as  they  stripped  them  of 
wings  and  feathers.  In  the  old  open  guano  shed  were  seen  the  remains 
of  hundreds  and  possibly  thousands  of  wings  which  were  placed  there 
but  never  cured  for  shipping,  as  the  marauders  were  interrupted  in  their 
work. 


BIRD    TRAGEDY  ON  LAYS  AN  ISLAND 


141 


SHED  FILLED  WITH  WINGS  OF  SLAUGHTERED  BIRDS  ON  LAYSAN  ISLAND 

"An  old  cistern  back  of  one  of  the  buildings  tells  a  story  of  cruelty 
that  surpasses  anything  else  done  by  these  heartless,  sanguinary  pirates, 
not  excepting  the  practice  of  cutting  wings  from  living  birds  and  leaving 
them  to  die  of  hemorrhage.  In  this  dry  cistern  the  living  birds  were  kept 
by  hundreds  to  slowly  starve  to  death.  In  this  way  the  fatty  tissue 
lying  next  to  the  skin  was  used  up,  and  the  skin  was  left  quite  free  from 
grease,  so  that  it  required  little  or  no  cleaning  during  preparation. 

"Many  other  revolting  sights,  such  as  the  remains  of  young  birds 
that  had  been  left  to  starve,  and  birds  with  broken  legs  and  deformed 
beaks  were  to  be  seen.  Killing  clubs,  nets  and  other  implements  used  by 
these  marauders  were  lying  all  about.  Hundreds  of  boxes  to  be  used  in 
shipping  the  bird  skins  were  packed  in  an  old  building.  It  was  very 
evident  they  intended  to  carry  on  their  slaughter  as  long  as  the  birds 
lasted. 

"Not  only  did  they  kill  and  skin  the  larger  species  but  they  caught 
and  caged  the  finch,  honey  eater,  and  miller  bird.  Cages  and  material 
for  making  them  were  found." — (Report  of  an  Expedition  to  Laysan 
Island  in  1911.     By  Homer  R.  Dill,  page  12.) 


The  report  of  Professor  Bryan  contains  the  following  pertinent  para- 
graphs : 

"This  wholesale  killing  has  had  an  appalling  effect  on  the  colony.   *  * 
It  is  conservative  to  say  that  fully  one-half  the  number  of  birds  of  both 


142  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

species  of  albatross  that  were  so  abundant  everywhere  in  1903  have  been 
killed.  The  colonies  that  remain  are  in  a  sadly  decimated  condition.  *  * 
Over  a  large  part  of  the  island,  in  some  sections  a  hundred  acres  in  a  place, 
that  ten  years  ago  were  thickly  inhabited  by  albatrosses  not  a  single 
bird  remains,  while  heaps  of  the  slain  lie  as  mute  testimony  of  the  awful 
slaughter  of  these  beautiful,  harmless,  and  without  doubt  beneficial 
inhabitants  of  the  high  seas. 

"While  the  main  activity  of  the  plume-hunters  was  directed  against 
the  albatrosses,  they  were  by  no  means  averse  to  killing  anything  in  the 
bird  line  that  came  in  their  way.  *  *  Fortunately,  serious  as  were  the 
depredations  of  the  poachers,  their  operations  were  interrupted  before 
any  of  the  species  had  been  completely  exterminated." 

But  the  work  of  the  Evil  Genius  of  Laysan  did  not  stop  with  the 
slaughter  of  three  hundred  thousand  birds.  Mr.  Schlemmer  introduced 
rabbits  and  guinea-pigs;  and  these  rapidly  multiplying  rodents  now  are 
threatening  to  consume  every  plant  on  the  island.  If  the  plants  dis- 
appear, many  of  the  insects  will  go  with  them ;  and  this  will  mean  the 
disappearance  of  the  small  insectivorous  birds. 

In  February,  1909,  President  Roosevelt  issued  an  executive  order 
creating  the  Hawaiian  Islands  Reservation  for  Birds.  In  this  are  in- 
cluded Laysan  and  twelve  other  islands  and  reefs,  some  of  which  are 
inhabited  by  birds  that  are  well  worth  preserving.  By  this  act,  we  may 
feel  that  for  the  future  the  birds  of  Laysan  and  neighboring  islets  are 
secure  from  further  attacks  by  the  bloody-handed  agents  of  the  vain 
women  who  still  insist  upon  wearing  the  wings  and  feathers  of  wild  birds. 


CHAPTER  XV 
UNFAIR  FIREARMS,  AND  SHOOTING  ETHICS 

For  considerably  more  than  a  century,  the  States  of  the  American 
Union  have  enacted  game-protective  laws  based  on  the  principle  that  the 
wild  game  belongs  to  the  People,  and  the  people's  senators,  representatives 
and  legislators  generally  may  therefore  enact  laws  for  its  protection, 
prescribing  the  manner  in  which  it  may  and  may  not  be  taken  and  pos- 
sessed. The  soundness  of  this  principle  has  been  fully  confirmed  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  in  the  case  of  Geer  vs.  Connecticut, 
on  March  2,  1896. 

The  tendency  of  predatory  man  to  kill  and  capture  wild  game  of  all 
kinds  by  wholesale  methods  is  as  old  as  the  human  race.  .The  days  of  the 
club,  the  stone  axe,  the  bow  and  arrow  and  the  flint-lock  gun  were  con- 
temporaneous with  the  days  of  great  abundance  of  game.  Now  that  the 
advent  of  breech-loaders,  repeaters,  automatics  and  fixed  ammunition 
has  rendered  game  scarce  in  all  localities  save  a  very  few,  the  thoughtful 
man  is  driven  to  consider  measures  for  the  checking  of  destruction  and 
the  suppression  of  wholesale  slaughter. 

First  of  all,  the  deadly  floating  batteries  and  sail-boats  were  pro- 
hibited. To-day  a  punt  gun  is  justly  regarded  as  a  relic  of  barbarism, 
and  any  man  who  uses  one  places  himself  beyond  the  pale  of  decent 
sportsmanship,  or  even  of  modern  pot-hunting.  Strange  to  say,  although 
the  unwritten  code  of  ethics  of  English  sportsmen  is  very  strict,  the  Eng- 
lish to  this  day  permit  wild-fowl  hunting  with  guns  of  huge  calibre,  some 
of  which  are  more  like  shot-cannons  than  shot-guns.  And  they  say, 
"Well,  there  are  still  wild  duck  on  our  coast!" 

Beyond  question,  it  is  now  high  time  for  the  English  people  to  take 
up  the  shot-gun  question,  and  consider  what  to-day  is  fair  and  unfair  in 
the  killing  of  waterfowl.  The  supply  of  British  ducks  and  geese  can  not 
forever  withstand  the  market  gunners  and  their  shot-cannons.  Has  not 
the  British  wild-fowl  supply  greatly  decreased  during  the  past  fifteen 
years?  I  strongly  suspect  that  a  careful  investigation  would  reveal  the 
fact  that  it  has  diminished.  The  Society  for  the  Preservation  of  the 
Fauna  of  the  Empire  should  look  into  the  matter,  and  obtain  a  series  of 
reports  on  the  condition  of  the  waterfowl  to-day  as  compared  with  what 
it  was  twenty  years  ago. 

In  the  United  States  we  have  eliminated  the  swivel  guns,  the  punt 
guns  and  the  very-big-bore  guns.  Among  the  real  sportsmen  the  tendency 
is  steadily  toward  shot-guns  of  small  caHbre,  especially  under  12-gauge. 
But,  outside  the  ranks  of  sportsmen,  we  are  now  face  to  face  with  two 
automatic  and  five  "pump"  shotguns  of  deadly  efficiency.     Of  these, 


144 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


■BRnmsm 

WINCHESTER  AUTOLOADING.  5  SHOTS  IN  4  SECONDS 
Loaded   and  cocked  by  it5  own  recoil. 


FOUR  OF  THE  SEVEN   MACHINE  GUNS 


more  than  one  hundred  thousand  are  being  made  and  sold  annually  by 
the  five  companies  that  produce  them.  Recently  the  annual  output 
has  been  carefully  estimated  from  known  facts  to  be  about  as  follows: 

Winchester  Arms  Co.,  New  Haven,  Conn. 

(1  Automatic  and  1  Pump-gun) 50,000  guns. 

Remington  Arms  Co.,  Ilion,  N.  Y. 

(1  Automatic  and  1  Pump-gun) 25,000 

Marlin  Fire  Arms  Co.,  New  Haven,  Conn.  1  Pump-gun.  .  .  .  12,000 

Stevens  Arms  Co.,  Chicopee  Falls,  Mass.  1  Pump-gun 10,000 

Union  Fire  Arms  Co.,    1  Pump-gun 5,000 

103,000  guns 

The  Ethics  of  Shooting  and  Shot-Guns. — Are  the  American  people 
willing  that  their  wild  birds  shall  be  shot  by  machinery? 

In  the  ethics  of  sportsmanship,  the  anglers  of  America  are  miles  ahead 
of  the  men  who  handle  the  rifle  and  shot-gun  in  the  hunting  field.  Will 
the  hunters  ever  catch  up  ? 

The  anglers  have  steadily  diminished  the  weight  of  the  rod  and  the 
size  of  the  line ;  and  they  have  prohibited  the  use  of  gang  hooks  and  nets. 
In  this  respect  the  initiative  of  the  Tuna  Club  of  Santa  Catalina  is  worthy 
of  the  highest  admiration.  Even  though  the  leaping  tuna,  the  jewfish 
and  the  sword-fish  are  big  and  powerful,  the  club  has  elected  to  raise  the 
standard  of  sportsmanship  by  making  captures  more  difficult  than  ever 
before.  A  higher  degree  of  skill,  and  nerve  and  judgment,  is  required  in 
the  angler  who  would  make  good  on  a  big  fish;  and,  incidentally,  the  fish 
has  about  double  "the  show"  that  it  had  fifteen  years  ago. 


UNFAIR    FIREARMS  AND   SHOOTING  ETHICS  145 

That  is  Sportsmanship ! 

But  how  is  it  with  the  men  who  handle  the  shot-gun  ? 

By  them,  the  Tuna  Club's  high-class  principle  has  been  exactly  re- 
versed! In  the  making  of  fishing-rods,  commercialism  plays  small  part; 
but  in  about  forty  cases  out  of  every  fifty  the  making  of  guns  is  solely 
a  matter  of  dollars  and  profits. 

Excepting  the  condemnation  of  automatic  and  pump  guns,  I  think 
that  few  clubs  of  sportsmen  have  laid  down  laws  designed  to  make 
shooting  more  difficult,  and  to  give  the  game  more  of  a  show  to  escape. 
Thousands  of  gentlemen  sportsmen  have  their  own  separate  unwritten 
codes  of  honor,  but  so  far  as  I  know,  few  of  them  have  been  written  out 
and  adopted  as  binding  rules  of  action.  I  know  that  among  expert  wing 
shots  it  is  an  unwritten  law  that  quail  and  grouse  must  not  be  shot  on 
the  ground,  nor  ducks  on  the  water.  But,  among  the  three  million 
gunners  who  annually  shoot  in  the  United  States  how  many,  think  you, 
are  there  who  in  actual  practice  observe  any  sentimental  principles  when 
in  the  presence  of  killable  game?  I  should  say  about  one  man  and  boy 
out  of  every  five  hundred. 

Up  to  this  time,  the  great  mass  of  men  who  handle  guns  have  left  it 
to  the  gunmakers  to  make  their  codes  of  ethics,  and  hand  them  out  with 
the  loaded  cartridges,  all  ready  for  use. 

For  fifty  years  the  makers  of  shot-guns  and  rifles  have  taxed  their 
ingenuity  and  resources  to  make  killing  easier,  especially  for  "amateur" 
sportsmen, — and  take  still  greater  advantages  oj  the  game!  Look  at  this 
scale  of  progression : 

Fifty  Years'  Increase  in  the  Deadliness  of  Firearms. 

KIND  OF  GUN.  ESTIMATED  DEGREE  OF  DEADLINESS. 

Single-shot  muzzle  loader ^_  10 

Single-shot  breech-loader ^^^__  30 

Double-barrel  breech-loader ^^^^^^^^  .50 

Choke-bore  breech-loader ^^^_i^^^^^^  60 

Repeating  rifle ■m^_^_h— «  60 

Repeating  rifle,  with  silencer ^^^^i^_^^.^^^_  70 

"Pump"  shot-gun  (6  shots) ^^_^_^.s_i^.^.i__  90 

Automatic  or  "autoloading"  shot-guns,  5  shots _.^_^....i_^^^^^^_..  100 

The  Output  oJ  igii. — At  a  recent  hearing  before  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  at  Washington,  a  representative  of  the  gun- 
making  industry  reported  that  in  the  year  1911  ten  American  manufac- 
turing concerns  turned  out  the  following : 

391,875  shot-guns, 

666,643  rifles,  and 

580,042  revolvers. 

There  are  66  factories  producing  firearms  and  ammunition,  employ- 
ing $39,377,000  of  invested  capital  and  15,000  employees. 

The  sole  and  dominant  thought  of  many  gunmakers  is  to  make  the 
very  deadliest  guns  that  human  skill  can  invent,  sell  them  as  fast  as 


146  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

possible,  and  declare  dividends  on  their  stock.  The  Remington,  Win- 
chester, Marlin,  Stevens  and  Union  Companies  are  engaged  in  a  mad 
race  to  see  who  can  turn  out  the  deadliest  guns,  and  the  most  of  them. 
On  the  market  to-day  there  are  five  pump-guns,  that  fire  six  shots  each, 
in  about  six  seconds,  without  removal  from  the  shoulder,  by  the  quick 
sliding  of  a  sleeve  under  the  barrel,  that  ejects  the  empty  shell  and  in- 
serts a  loaded  one.  There  are  two  automatics  that  fire  five  shots  each  in 
five  seconds  or  less,  by  five  pulls  on  the  trigger!  The  autoloading  gun  is 
reloaded  and  cocked  again  wholly  by  its  own  recoil.  Now,  if  these  are  not 
machine  guns,  what  are  they? 

In  view  of  the  great  scarcity  of  feathered  game,  and  the  number  of 
deadly  machine  guns  already  on  the  market,  the  production  of  the  last 
and  deadliest  automatic  gun  (by  the  Winchester  Arms  Company), 
already  in  great  demand,  is  a  crime  against  wild  life,  no  less. 

Every  human  action  is  a  matter  of  taste  and  individual  honor 

It  is  natural  for  the  duck-butchers  of  Currituck  to  love  the  automatic 
shot-guns  as  they  do,  because  they  kill  the  most  ducks  per  flock.  With 
two  of  them  in  his  boat,  holding  ten  shots,  one  expert  duck-killer  can, — 
and  sometimes  actually  does,  so  it  is  said, — get  every  duck  out  of  a  flock, 
up  to  seven  or  eight. 

It  is  natural  for  an  awkward  and  blundering  wing-shot  to  love  the 
deadliest  gun,  in  order  that  he  may  make  as  good  a  bag  as  an  expert  shot 
can  make  with  a  double-barreled  gun.  It  is  natural  for  the  hunter  who 
does  not  care  a  rap  about  the  extermination  of  species  to  love  the  gun  that 
will  enable  him  to  kill  up  to  the  bag  limit,  every  time  he  takes  the  field. 
It  is  natural  for  men  who  don't  think,  or  who  think  in  circles,  to  say  "so 
long  as  I  observe  the  lawful  bag  limit,  what  difference  does  it  make  what 
kind  of  a  gun  I  use  ? ' ' 

It  is  natural  for  the  Remington,  and  Winchester,  and  Marlin  gun- 
makers  to  say,  as  they  do,  "  Enforce  the  laws !  Shorten  the  open  seasons ! 
Reduce  the  bag  limit,  and  then  it  won't  matter  what  guns  are  used! 
But, — DON'T  touch  autoloading  guns!  Don't  hamper  Inventive 
Genius ! ' ' 

Is  it  not  high  time  for  American  sportsmen  to  cease  taking  their 
moral  principles  and  their  codes  of  ethics  from  the  gun-makers  ? 

Here  is  a  question  that  I  would  like  to  put  before  every  hunter  of 
game  in  America : 

In  view  of  the  alarming  scarcity  of  game,  in  view  of  the  impending 
extermination  of  species  by  legal  hunting,  can  any  high-minded  sports- 
man, can  any  good  citizen  either  sell  a  machine  shot-gun  or  use  one  in 
hunting  ? 

A  gentleman  is  incapable  of  taking  an  unfair  advantage  of  any  wild 
creature;  therefore  a  gentleman  cannot  use  punt  guns  for  ducks,  dyna- 
mite for  game  fish,  or  automatic  or  pump  guns  in  bird-shooting.  The 
machine  guns  and  "silencers"  are  grossly  unfair,  and  like  gang-hooks, 
nets  and  dynamite  for  trout  and  bass,  their  use  in  hunting  must  every- 


UNFAIR    FIREARMS  A  AW   SHOOTING   ETHICS 


147 


THE  CHAMPION    liAMK  bLAULfH  IKK   IJAbli 
One  Hour's  Slaughter  C218  Geese)  With  Two  Automatic  Shot-Guns 


where  be  prohibited  by  law.  Times  have  changed,  and  the  Hnes  for  pro- 
tection must  be  more  tightly  drawn. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania  (Judge  Orlady)  has  decided 
that  the  Pennsylvania  law  against  the  use  of  automatic  guns  in  hunting 
is  entirely  constitutional,  because  every  state  has  a  right  to  say  how  its 
game  may  and  may  not  be  killed. 

It  is  up  to  the  American  People  to  say  now  whether  their  wild  life 
shall  be  slaughtered  by  machinery,  or  not. 

If  they  are  willing  that  it  should  be,  then  let  us  be  consistent  and  say, 
— away  with  all  "conservation!"  The  game  conservators  can  endure  a 
gameless  and  birdless  continent  quite  as  well  as  the  average  citizen  can. 

How  They  Work. — There  are  a  few  apologists  for  the  automatic 
and  pump  guns  who  cheerfully  say,  "So  long  as  the  bag  limit  is  observed, 
what  difference  does  it  make  how  the  birds  are  killed?" 

It  is  strange  that  a  conscientious  man  should  ask  such  a  question, 
when  the  answer  is  apparent. 

We  reply,  "  The  difference  is  that  an  automatic  or  pump  gun  will  kill 
fully  twice  as  many  waterfowl  as  a  double-barrel,  ij  not  more;  and  it  is 
highly  undesirable  that  every  gunner  should  get  the  bag  limit  of  birds,  or  any 


148  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

number  near  it!  The  birds  can  not  stand  it.  Moreover,  the  best  states  for 
ducks  and  geese  have  no  bag  limits  on  those  birds!  To-day,  on  Currituck 
Sound,  for  example,  the  market  hunters  are  kilHng  all  the  waterfowl  they 
can  sell.  On  Marsh  Island,  Louisiana,  one  man  has  killed  369  ducks  in 
one  day,  and  another  market  gunner  killed  430  in  one  day. 

The  automatic  and  the  ' '  pump ' '  shot-guns  are  the  favorite  weapons 
of  the  game-hog  who  makes  a  specialty  of  geese  and  ducks.  It  is  no  un- 
common thing  for  a  gunner  who  shoots  a  machine  gun  to  get,  with  one 
gun,  as  high  as  eight  birds  out  of  one  flock.  A  man  who  has  himself  done 
this  has  told  me  so. 

The  Champion  Game-Slaughter  Case. — Here  is  a  story  from  California 
that  is  no  fairy  tale.  It  was  published,  most  innocently,  in  a  western 
magazine,  with  the  illustration  that  appears  herewith,  and  in  which  please 
notice  the  automatic  shot-gun: 

"February  5th,  I  and  a  friend  were  at  one  of  the  Glenn  County  Club's 
camps.  *  *  Neither  of  us  having  ever  had  the  pleasure  of  shooting  over 
live  decoys,  we  were  anxious,  and  could  hardly  wait  for  the  sport  to  com- 
mence. On  arriving  at  the  scene  we  noticed  holes  which  had  been  dug  in 
the  ground,  just  large  enough  for  a  man  to  crawl  into.  These  holes  were 
used  for  hiding  places,  and  were  deep  enough  so  the  sportsmen  would  be 
entirely  out  of  sight  of  the  gaine.  The  birds  are  so  wild  that  to  move  a 
finger  will  frighten  them.  *  * 

"The  decoys  are  wild  geese  which  had  been  crippled  and  tamed  for 
this  purpose.  They  are  placed  inside  of  silk  net  fences  which  are  located 
on  each  side  of  the  holes  dug  for  hiding  places.  These  nets  are  the  color 
of  the  ground  and  it  is  impossible  for  the  wild  geese  flying  overhead  to 
detect  the  difference. 

"After  we  had  investigated  everything  the  expert  caller  and  owner 
of  the  outfit  exclaimed:   ' Into  your  holes!' 

"We  noticed  in  the  distance  a  flock  of  geese  coming.  Our  caller  in  a 
few  seconds  had  their  attention,  and  they  headed  towards  our  decoys. 
Soon  they  were  directly  over  us,  but  out  of  easy  range  of  our  guns.  We 
were  anxious  to  shoot,  but  in  obedience  to  our  boss  had  to  keep  still,  and 
soon  noticed  that  the  birds  were  soaring  around  and  in  a  short  time  were 
within  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  of  us.  At  that  moment  we  heard  the  com- 
mand, 'Punch  'em!'  and  the  bombardment  that  followed  was  beyond 
imagining.  We  had  fired  five  shots  apiece,  and  found  we  had  bagged  ten 
geese  from  this  one  fiock. 

"At  the  end  of  one  hour's  shooting  we  had  218  birds  to  our  credit 
and  were  out  of  ammunition. 

"On  finding  that  no  more  shells  were  in  our  pits  we  took  our  dead 
geese  to  the  camp  and  returned  with  a  new  supply  of  ammunition.  We 
remained  in  the  pits  during  the  entire  day.  When  the  sun  had  gone 
behind  the  mountains  we  summed  up  our  kill  and  it  amounted  to  4^0 
geese! 

"The  picture  shown  with  this  article  gives  a  view  of  the  first  hour's 


UNFAIR    FIREARMS  AND    SHOOTING   ETHICS 


149 


SLAUGHTERED  ACCORDING  TO  LAW 

A  Result  of  a  Faulty  System 


Such  Pictures  as  this  are  Very  Common  in  Sportsmen's  Magazines 
Note  the  Automatic  Gun 


shoot.  A  photograph  would  have  been  taken  of  the  remainder  of  the 
shoot,  but  it  being  warm  weather  the  birds  had  to  be  shipped  at  once  in 
order  to  keep  them  from  spoiling. 

"Supper  was  then  eaten,  after  which  we  were  driven  back  to  Willows; 
both  agreeing  that  it  was  one  of  the  greatest  days  of  sport  we  ever  had, 
and  wishing  that  we  might,  through  the  courtesy  of  the  Glenn  County 
Goose  Club,  have  another  such  day.  C.  H.  B." 

Another  picture  was  published  in  a  Canadian  magazine,  illustrating 
a  story  from  which  I  quote : 

"I  fixed  the  decoys,  hid  my  boat  and  took  my  position  in  the  blind. 
My  man  started  his  work  with  a  will  and  hustled  the  ducks  out  of  every 
cove,  inlet  or  piece  of  marsh  for  two  miles  around.  I  had  barely  time  to 
slip  the  cartridges  into  my  guns^ — one  a  double  and  the  other  a  five  shot 
automatic — when  I  saw  a  brace  of  birds  coming  toward  me.  They  sailed 
in  over  my  decoys.  I  rose  to  the  occasion,  and  the  leader  up-ended  and 
tumbled  in  among  the  decoys.  The  other  bird,  unable  to  stop  quick 
enough,  came  directly  over  me.  He  closed  his  wings  and  struck  the 
ground  in  the  rear  of  the  blind. 

"  More  and  more  followed.  Sometimes  they  came  singh',  and  then 
in  twos  and  threes.     I  kept  busy  and  attended  to  each  bird  as  quickly 


150  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

as  possible.  Whenever  there  was  a  lull  in  the  flight  I  went  out  in  the 
boat  and  picked  up  the  dead,  leaving  the  wounded  to  take  chances  with 
any  gunner  lucky  enough  to  catch  them  in  open  and  smooth  water.  A 
bird  handy  in  the  air  is  worth  two  wounded  ones  in  the  water.  Twice 
I  took  six  dead  birds  out  of  the  water  for  seven  shots,  and  both  guns  empty. 

"  The  ball  thus  opened,  the  birds  commenced  to  move  in  all  directions. 
Until  the  morning's  flight  was  over  I  was  kept  busy  pumping  lead,  first 
with  the  10,  then  with  the  automatic,  reloading,  picking  up  the  dead,  etc." 

And  the  reader  will  observe  that  the  harmless,  innocent,  inoffensive 
automatic  shot  gun,  that  "don't  matter  if  you  enforce  the  bag  limit," 
figures  prominently  in  both  stories  and  both  photographs. 

A  Story  of  Two  Pump  Guns  and  Geese: — It  comes  from  Aberdeen, 
S.  D.  (Sand  Lake),  in  the  spring  of  1911.  Mr.  J.  J.  Humphrey  tells  it,  in 
Outdoor  Life  magazine  for  July,  1911. 

' '  Smith  and  I  were  about  a  hundred  yards  from  them  [the  flock  of 
Canada  geese] ,  when  Murphy  scared  them.  They  rose  in  a  dense  mass 
and  came  directly  between  Smith  and  me.  We  were  about  gunshot 
distance  apart,  and  they  were  not  over  thirty  feet  in  the  air  when  we 
opened  up  on  them  with  our  pump  guns  and  No.  5  shot.  When  the  smoke 
cleared  away  and  we  had  rounded  up  the  cripples  we  found  we  had  twenty- 
one  geese.  I  have  heard  of  bigger  killings  out  in  this  country,  but  never 
positively  knew  of  them." 

So  then:  those  two  gunners  averaged  loYz  wild  geese  per  pump  gun  out 
of  one  flock!  And  yet  there  are  wise  and  reflective  sportsmen  who  say, 
"What  difference  does  the  kind  of  gun  make  so  long  as  you  live  up  to 
the  law?" 

I  think  that  the  pump  and  automatic  guns  make  about  yj  per-cent 
of  difference,  against  the  game;   that  is  all ! 

The  number  of  shot-guns  now  in  use  in  the  United  States  is  almost 
beyond  belief.  About  six  years  ago  a  gentleman  interested  in  the 
manufacture  of  such  weapons  informed  me,  and  his  statement  has  never 
been  disputed,  that  every  year  about  500,000  new  shot-guns  were  sold  in 
the  United  States.  The  number  of  shot  cartridges  annually  produced  by 
our  four  great  cartridge  companies  has  been  reliably  estimated  as  follows : 

Winchester  Arms  Co 300,000,000 

Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Co 250,000,000 

Peters  Cartridge  Co 150,000,000 

Western  Cartridge  Co 75,000,000 


775,000,000 

We  must  stop  all  the  holes  in  the  barrel,  or  eventually  lose  all  the 
water.  No  group  of  bird-slaughterers  is  entitled  to  immunity.  We  will 
not  "limit  the  bag,  and  enforce  the  laws,"  while  we  permit  the  makers 
and  users  of  autoloading  and  pump  guns  to  kill  at  will,  as  they  demand. 

Yes ;  we  will ' '  limit  the  bag ' '  and  ' '  enforce  the  laws ; ' '  but  the  machine 


National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies 


Founded  1901.     Incor: 


For  the  Protection  of  Wild  Birds  and  Animals 


Map  showing  (shaded)  Sutes  havinK 
Audubon  Societies 


W'lLLIAM  DUTCHER,  President 
JOHN  E.  THAYER,  Isl  VlcePreslden. 
THEO.  S.  PALMER,  M.  D.,  2(1  Vlce-Presldenl 
T.  GILBERT  PEARSON,  Secrelsry 
FRANK  M.  CHAPMAN,  Treasurer 
SAMUEL  T.  CARTER,  Jr.,  Allorneir 

OFFICES 

525  Manhattan  Avenue,  TJew  York  City 

141  Broadway, 


the  noo-game  birds 


Feb.    26th  1906, 

My  dear  Mr.  Hornaday:- 

It  is  with  much  surprise  that  I  learn 
through  your  communication  of  even  date  that  certain 
persons  are  claiming  that  the  National  Association  of 
Audubon  Societies  for  the  Protection  of  Wild  Animals  and 
Birds  is  in  favor  of  the  use  of  automatic  or  pump  guns, 
and  consequently  is  not  in  favor  of  the  passage  of  laws 
to  prevent  the  use  or  sale  of  such  firearms. 

I  beg  officially  to  state  that  the  National 
Association  of  Audubon  Societies  is  absolutely  opposed  to 
either  the  manufacture,  sale,  or  use  of  such  firearms,  and 
therefore  hopes  that  the  meritorious  bill  introduced  by 
the  New  York  Zoological  Society  will  become  a  law. 

I  beg  further  to  add  that  any  statement  con- 
trary to  the  above  in  effect  is  unauthorized. 

This  society  is  working  for  the  preservation 
of  the  wild  birds  and  game  of  North  America,  and  it 
sincerely  should  not  stultify  itself  by  advocating  the  use 
of  one  of  the  most  potent  means  of  destruction  that  has 
ever  been  devised. 

You  are  at  liberty  to  use  this  communication 
either  publicly  or  privately. 


Very  aincecaly  yours, 


dent. 


A  LETTER  THAT  TELLS  ITS  OWN  STORY 


152  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

guns  and  the  alien  shooters  shall  be  eliminated  at  the  same  time !  Each 
state  has  the  power  to  regulate,  absolutely,  down  to  the  smallest  detail, 
the  manner  in  which  the  game  of  The  People  shall  be  taken  or  not  taken ; 
and  such  laws  are  absolutely  constitutional.  If  we  can  legislate  punt 
guns  and  dynamite  out  of  use,  the  machine  guns  and  silencers  can  be 
treated  similarly. 

No  immunity  jor  wild-life  exterminators. 

The  following  unprejudiced  testimony  from  a  New  York  business 
man  who  is  a  sportsman,  with  a  fine  game  preserve  of  his  own,  should  be 
of  general  interest.    It  was  written  to  G.  O.  Shields,  March  21,  1906. 

Dear  Sir: 

Regarding  the  use  of  the  automatic  shot-gun,  would  say  that  I  am  a  member  of  two 
southern  ducking  clubs  where  these  guns  are  used  very  extensively.  I  have  seen  a  flock 
of  ducks  come  into  a  blind  where  one,  two,  or  even  three  of  these  guns  were  in  use,  and 
have  seen  as  many  as  eleven  shots  poured  into  a  single  flock. 

We  have  considerable  poaching  on  one  of  these  clubs,  the  territory  being  so  ex- 
tensive that  it  is  impossibe  to  prevent  it.  We  own  60,000  acres,  and  these  poachers, 
I  am  told,  nearly  all  use  the  automatic  guns.  They  frequently  kill  six  or  eight  ducks 
out  of  one  flock — first  taking  a  raking  shot  on  the  water,  and  then  getting  in  the  balance 
of  the  magazine  before  the  flock  is  out  of  range.  In  fact,  some  of  them  carry  two  guns, 
and  are  able  to  discharge  a  part  of  the  second  magazine  into  the  same  flock. 

As  I  told  you  the  other  evening,  I  am  not  so  much  against  the  gun  when  in  the  hands 
of  gentlemen  and  real  sportsmen,  but,  on  account  of  its  terrible  possibilities  for  market 
hunters,  I  believe  that  the  only  safe  way  is  to  abolish  it  entirely,  and  that  the  better 
class  should  be  willing  to  give  up  this  weapon  as  being  the  only  means  of  putting  a  stop 
to  this  willful  game  slaughter. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Arthur  Robinson. 

HOW  GENTLEMEN  SPORTSMEN  REGARD  AUTOMATIC  AND  PUMP  GUNS 

Each  one  of  the  following  organizations,  chiefly  clubs  of  gentlemen 
sportsmen,  have  adopted  strong  resolutions  condemning  the  use  of  auto- 
matic guns  in  hunting,  and  either  requesting  or  recommending  the 
enactment  of  laws  against  their  use : 

New  York  Zoological  Society Henry  Fairfield  Osborn,  President 

The  Camp-Fire  Club  of  America Daniel  C.  Beard,  President 

Boone  and  Crockett  Club W.  Austin  Wadsworth,  President 

New  York  State  Fish,  Game  and  Forest  League 81  Clubs  and  Associations 

New  York  Association  for  the  Protection  of  Fish  and  Game .  .  Alfred  Wagstaff ,  President 

Lewis  and  Clark  Club John  M.  Phillips,  President 

League  of  American  Sportsmen G.  O.  Shields,  President 

Wild  Life  Protective  Association W.  T.  Hornaday,  President 

WHERE  AUTOMATIC  GUNS  ARE  BARRED  OUT  BY  LAW 

Pennsylvania,  1907  British  Columbia,  1911 

New  Jersey,  1912  Ontario,  1907 

•        Saskatchewan,  1906  Manitoba,  1909 

New  Brunswick,  1907  Alberta,  1907 

PriNCE  Edward  Island,  1906 


UNFAIR    FIREARMS  AND    SHOOTING  ETHICS  153 

SPORTSMEN'S  CLUBS  WHEREIN  THEY  ARE  BARRED  BY  CODES  OF 
ETHICS  AND  RULES 

Adirondack  League  Club,  New  York  Tobico  Hunting  Club,  Kawkawlin,  Mich. 

Blooming  Grove  Park  Hunting  Turtle  Lake  Club,  Turtle  Lake,  Mich. 

and  Fishing  Club,  Penn.  Au  Sable  Forest  Farm  Club,  Mich. 

Greenwing  Gun  Club,  Ottawa,  111  Wallace   Ducking   Club,   Wild   Fowl   Bay, 
Western  Ducking  Club,  Detroit,  Minn.  Mich. 

Bolsa  Chica  Club,  Los  Angeles,  Cal.  Lomita  Club,  Los  Angeles,  Cal. 

Westminster  Club,  Los  Angeles,  Cal.  Golden  West  Club,  Los  Angeles,  Cal. 

Los  Patos  Club,  Los  Angeles,  Cal.  Recreation  Club,  Los  Angeles,  Cal. 
Pocahontas  Club,  Va. 

A  MODEL  BILL  TO  PROHIBIT  THE  USE  OF  AUTOMATIC  AND  REPEATING 

SHOT  GUNS  IN  HUNTING 

Section  1.  It  shall  be  unlawful  to  use  in  hunting  or  shooting  birds  or  animals  of  any 
kind,  any  automatic  or  repeating  shot  gun  or  pump  gun,  or  any  shot-gun  holding  more 
than  two  cartridges  at  one  time,  or  that  may  be  fired  more  than  twice  without  removal 
from  the  shoulder  for  reloading. 

Section  2.  Violation  of  any  provision  of  this  act  shall  be  punished  by  a  fine  of  not 
less  than  twenty-five  nor  more  than  one  hundred  dollars  for  each  offence ;  and  the  car- 
rying, or  possession  in  the  woods,  or  in  any  field,  or  upon  any  water  of  any  gun  or  other 
weapon  the  use  of  which  is  prohibited,  as  aforesaid,  shall  be  prima  facie  evidence  of  the 
violation  of  this  act. 

The  English  j-barrel  "Scatter  Rifle,"  for  Dvicks. — All  gunners  who 
find  machine  guns  good  enough  for  them  will  be  delighted  by  the  news 
that  an  Englishman  whose  identity  is  concealed  under  the  initials 
"F.  M.  M. "  has  invented  and  manufactured  a  3-barreled  rifle  specially 
intended  to  kill  ducks  that  are  beyond  the  reach  of  a  choke-bore  shot- 
gun. The  weapon  discharges  all  three  barrels  simultaneously.  In  the 
London  Field,  of  Dec.  9,  1911,  it  is  described  by  a  writer  w^ho  also  thought- 
fully conceals  his  identity  under  a  nom-de-plume.  After  a  trial  of  48 
shots,  the  writer  declares  that  "the  3-barreled  is  a  really  practicable 
weapon,"  and  that  with  it  one  could  bag  wild-fowl  that  were  quite  out  of 
reach  of  any  shot-gun.  Just  why  a  Gatling  gun  or  a  Maxim  should  not 
be  employed  for  the  same  purpose,  the  writer  fails  to  state.  The  use  of 
either  would  be  quite  as  sportsmanlike,  and  as  fair  to  the  game.  There 
are  great  possibilities  in  ducking  mortars,  also. 

The  "Sunday  Gun." — A  new  weapon  of  peculiar  form  and  great 
deadliness  to  song  birds,  has  recently  come  into  use.  Because  of  the 
manner  of  its  use,  it  is  known  as  the  "Sunday  gun."  It  is  specially 
adapted  to  concealment  on  the  person.  A  man  could  go  through  a  recep- 
tion with  one  of  these  deadly  weapons  absolutely  concealed  under  his 
dress  coat !  It  is  a  weapon  with  two  barrels,  rifle  and  shot ;  and  it  enables 
the  user  to  kill  anything  from  a  humming-bird  up  to  a  deer.  What  the 
shot-barrel  can  not  kill,  the  rifle  will.  It  is  not  a  gun  that  any  sportsman 
would  own,  save  as  a  curiosity,  or  for  target  use. 

The  State  Ornithologist  of  Massachusetts,  Mr.  E.  H.  Forbush,  in- 
forms me  that  already  the  "Sunday  gun"  has  become  a  scourge  to  the 
bird  life  of  that  state.  Thousands  of  them  are  used  by  men  and  boys 
who  live  in  cities  and  towns,  and  are  able  to  get  into  the  country  only  on 


154  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Sundays.  They  conceal  them  under  their  coats,  on  Sunday  mornings, 
go  out  into  the  country,  and  spend  the  day  in  shooting  small  birds  and 
mammals.  The  dead  birds  are  concealed  in  various  pockets,  the  Sunday 
gun  goes  under  the  coat,  and  at  nightfall  the  guerrilla  rides  back  to  the 
city  with  an  innocent  smile  on  his  face,  as  if  he  had  spent  a  day  in  harm- 
less enjoyment  of  the  beauties  of  nature. 

The  "Sunday  gun"  is  on  sale  everywhere,  and  it  is  said  to  be  in  use 
both  by  American  and  Italian  killers  of  song-birds.  It  weighs  only  two 
pounds,  eight  ounces,  and  its  cost  is  so  trifling  that  any  guerrilla  who 
wishes  one  can  easily  find  the  money  for  its  purchase.  There  are  in  the 
United  States  at  least  a  million  men  and  boys  quite  mean  enough  to  use 
this  weapon  on  song-birds,  swallows,  woodpeckers,  nuthatches,  rabbits 
and  squirrels,  and  like  other  criminals,  hide  both  weapon  and  loot  in 
their  clothing.  So  long  as  this  gun  is  in  circulation,  no  small  bird  is  safe,, 
at  any  season,  near  any  city  or  town. 

Now,  what  are  the  People  going  to  do  about  it  ? 

My  recommendation  is  that  each  state  enact  a  law  in  the  following 
terms : 

Be  it  enacted,  etc. — That  from  and  after  the  passage  of  this  act  it 
shall  be  unlawful  for  any  person  to  use  in  hunting,  or  to  carry  concealed 
on  the  person,  any  shotgun,  or  rifle,  or  combination  of  shotgun  and  rifle, 
with  a  barrel  or  barrels  less  than  twenty-eight  inches  in  length,  or  with  a 
skeleton  stock  fixed  on  a  hinge. 

The  carrying  of  any  rifle  or  shotgun  concealed  on  the  person  shall 
constitute  a  felony. 

The  penalties  for  hunting  with  any  gun  specially  adapted  to  con- 
cealment should  be  not  less  than  $50  fine  or  two  months  imprisonment  at 
hard  labor,  and  the  carrying  of  such  weapons  concealed  should  be  $100 
or  four  months  at  hard  labor. 

Incidentally,  we  wonder  what  will  be  the  next  devilish  device  for  the 
destruction  of  wild  life  that  American  in\'entive  genius  will  produce. 


THE  "SUNDAY  GUN  !" 
A  Deadly  Combination  of  Concealable  Rifle-and-Shot-Gun. 


THE  WILDERNESS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  (SHADED)  AND  THE  ARCTIC 
PRAIRIES,  WELL  STOCKED  WITH  BIG  GAME 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE   PRESENT  AND   FUTURE   OF    NORTH   AMERICAN   BIG 

GAME 

The  subject  of  this  chapter  opens  up  a  vast  field  of  facts  and  conclu- 
sions, quite  broad  enough  to  fill  a  whole  volume.  In  the  space  at  our  dis- 
posal here  it  is  possible  to  offer  only  a  summary  of  the  subject,  without 
attempting  to  prove  our  statements  by  the  production  of  detailed 
evidence. 

To  say  that  all  over  the  world,  the  large  land  mammals  are  being 
destroyed  more  rapidly  than  they  are  breeding,  would  not  be  literally 
true,  for  the  reason  that  there  are  yet  many  areas  that  are  almost  un- 
touched by  the  destroying  hand  of  civilized  man.  It  is  true,  however, 
that  all  the  unspoiled  areas  rapidly  are  growing  fewer  and  smaller.  It 
is  also  true  that  in  all  the  regions  of  the  earth  that  ai  easily  penetrable 
by  civilized  man,  the  wild  life  is  being  killed  faster  thai,  it  breeds,  and  of 
necessity  it  is  disappearing.  This  is  why  the  British  are  now  so  urgently 
bestirring  themselves  to  create  game  preserves  in  all  the  countries  that 
they  own. 

It  is  one  of  the  inexorable  laws  of  Nature,  to  which  I  know  of  not  one 
exception,  that  large  hoofed  animals  which  live  on  open  plains,  on  open 
mountains,  or  in  regions  that  are  thinly  forested,  always  are  easily  found 
and  easily  exterminated.  All  such  animals  have  a  weak  hold  on  life. 
This  is  because  it  is  so  difficult  for  them  to  hide,  and  so  very  easy  for  man 
to  creep  up  within  the  killing  range  of  modern,  high-power,  long-range 
rifles.  Is  it  not  pitiful  to  think  of  animals  like  the  caribou,  moose,  white 
sheep  and  bear  trying  to  survive  on  the  naked  ridges  and  bald  mountains 
of  Yukon  Territory  and  Alaska !  With  a  modern  rifle,  the  greatest  duffer 
on  earth  can  creep  up  within  killing  distance  of  any  of  the  big  game  of  the 
North. 

The  gray  wolf  is  practically  the  only  large  animal  that  is  able  to  hide 
successfully  and  survive  in  the  treeless  regions  of  the  North;  but  his 
room  is  always  preferable  to  his  company,  because  he,  too,  is  a  destroyer 
of  big  game. 

I  am  tempted  to  try  to  map  out  roughly  what  are  to-day  the  un- 
opened and  undestroyed  wild  haunts  of  big  game  in  North  America. 
In  doing  this,  however,  I  warn  the  reader  not  to  be  deceived  into  think- 
ing that  because  game  still  exists  in  those  regions,  those  areas  therefore 
constitute  a  permanent  preserve  and  safe  breeding-ground  for  large 
mammals.  That  is  very,  very  far  from  being  the  case.  The  further 
"opening  up  "  of  the  wilderness  areas,  as  I  shall  call  them  for  convenience, 


THE   PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG   GAME  157 

can  and  surely  will  quickly  wipe  out  their  big  game;  for  throughout  nine- 
tenths  of  those  areas  it  holds  to  life  by  very  slender  threads. 

To-day  the  unopened  and  undestroyed  wilderness  areas  of  North 
America,  wherein  large  mammals  still  live  in  a  normal  wild  state,  are  in 
general  as  follows : 

The  Arctic  Barren  Grounds,  or  Arctic  Prairies,  north  of  the  limit 
of  tre-'^,  embracing  the  Barren  Grounds  of  northern  Canada,  the  great 
arcti.  archipelago,  Ellesmere,  Melville  and  Grant  Lands  and  Greenland. 
This  region  is  the  home  of  the  musk-ox  and  three  species  of  arctic  caribou. 

The  Alaska-Yukon  Region,  inhabited  by  the  moose,  white  motmtain 
sheep,  mountain  goat,  four  species  of  caribou,  and  half  a  dozen  species 
of  Alaska  brown,  grizzly  and  black  bears. 

Northern  Ontario,  Quebec,  Labrador  and  Newfoundland, 
inhabited  by  moose,  woodland  caribou,  white-tailed  deer  and  black  bear. 

British  Columbia,  inhabited  by  a  magnificent  big-game  fauna 
embracing  the  moose,  elk,  caribou  of  two  species,  white  sheep,  black 
sheep,  big-horn  sheep,  mule  deer,  white-tailed  deer,  mountain  goat, 
grizzly,  black  and  inland  white  bears. 

The  Sierra  Madre  of  Mexico,  containing  jaguar,  puma,  grizzly 
and  black  bears,  mule  deer,  white-tailed  deer,  antelope,  mountain  sheep 
and  peccaries. 

I  have  necessarily  omitted  all  those  regions  of  the  United  States  and 
Canada  that  still  contain  a  remnant  of  big  game,  but  have  been  literally 
"shot  to  pieces"  by  gunners. 

In  the  United  States  and  southern  Canada  there  are  about  fifteen 
localities  which  contain  a  supply  of  big  game  sufficient  that  a  conscien- 
tious sportsman  might  therein  hunt  and  kill  one  head  per  year  with  a 
clear  conscience.  All  others  should  be  closed  for  five  years!  Here  is  the. 
list  of  availables ;  and  regarding  it  there  will  be  about  as  many  opinions 
as  there  are  big-game  sportsmen : 

HUNTING   GROUNDS   IN  AND    NEAR   THE   UNITED   STATES  AND 

SOUTHERN   CANADA  WHEREIN  IT  IS  RIGHT  TO 

HUNT  BIG  GAME 

The  Maine  Woods:    Well  stocked  with  white-tailed  deer. 

New  Brunswick:  Well  stocked  with  moose;  a  few  caribou,  deer  and 
black  bear. 

White  Mountains  of  New  Hampshire  and  Vermont:     For  deer. 

The  Adirondacks,  New  York  :  Well  stocked  with  white-tailed  deer, 
only. 

Pennsylvania  Mountains:  Contain  many  deer  and  black  bears, 
and  soon  will  contain  more. 

Northern  Minnesota:     Deer  and  moose. 

Northern  Michigan  and  Wisconsin:    White-tailed  deer. 


158  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Northwestern  Wyoming:  Thousands  of  elk  in  fall  and  winter;  a 
few  deer,  grizzly  and  black  bears,  but  no  sheep  that  it  would  be  right 
to  kill. 

Western  and  Southwestern  Montana:  Elk  in  season,  mule  and 
white-tail  deer;  no  sheep  that  it  would  be  right  to  kill. 

Northwestern  Montana  :  Mule  and  white-tailed  deer,  only.  No 
sheep,  bear,  moose,  elk  or  antelope  to  kill! 

Wyoming,  East  of  Yellowstone  Park:  A  few  elk,  by  m.  -  ation 
from  the  Park;  a  few  deer,  and  bear  of  two  species. 

Northern  Woods  of  Ontario  and  Quebec:    Moose;  deer. 

Southern  British  Columbia:  Goat,  a  few  sheep  and  deer;  grizzly 
bear.     Moose,  caribou  and  elk  should  not  be  killed. 

Northern  British  Columbia:    Six  fine  species  of  big  game. 

Northwestern  Alberta  :    Grizzly  bear,  big-horn  and  mountain  goat. 

Under  existing  conditions  I  regard  the  above-named  hunting  grounds 
as  nearly  all  in  which  it  is  right  or  fair  for  big-game  hunting  now  to  be 
permitted,  even  on  a  strict  basis.  Nearly  all  others  should  immediately 
be  closed,  for  large  game,  for  ten  years. 

Of  course  such  a  proceeding,  if  carried  into  effect,  would  provoke  loud 
protests  from  sportsmen,  gunners,  game-hogs,  pot-hunters  and  others; 
but  I  only  wish  to  high  heaven  that  we  had  the  power  to  carry  such  a 
program  as  that  into  effect !  Then  we  would  see  some  game  in  ten  years; 
and  our  grand-children  would  thank  us  for  some  real  big-game  protection 
at  a  critical  period. 

Except  in  the  few  localities  above-mentioned,  I  regard  the  big-game 
situation  in  the  United  States  and  southern  Canada  as  particularly  des- 
perate. Unless  there  is  an  immediate  and  complete  revolution  in  this 
country  from  an  era  of  slaughter  to  an  era  of  preservation,  as  sure  as  the 
sun  rises  on  the  morrow,  outside  of  the  hard  and  fast  game  preserves, 
and  places  like  Maine  and  the  Adirondacks,  this  generation  of  Americans 
and  near-Americans  will  live  to  see  our  country  swept  clean  of  big  game! 

Two  years  ago,  I  did  not  believe  this ;  but  I  do  now.  It  is  impossible 
to  exaggerate  the  wide  extent  or  the  seriousness  of  this  situation.  In  a 
country  where  any  and  every  individual  can  rise  and  bluster,  "I'm- 
ju3t-a3-good-as->'0M-are,"  and  bellow  for  his  "rights"  as  a  "tax-payer," 
there  is  no  stopping  the  millions  who  kill  whenever  there  is  an  open  season. 
And  to  many  Americans,  no  right  is  dearer  than  the  right  to  kill  the  game 
which  by  even  the  commonest  law  of  equity  belongs,  not  to  the  shooter  ex- 
clusively, but  partly  to  two  thousand  other  persons  who  don't  shoot  at  all ! 

Unless  we  come  to  an  "About,  face! "  in  quick  time,  all  our  big  game 
outside  the  preserves  is  doomed  to  sure  and  quick  extermination.  This 
is  not  an  individual  opinion,  merely:  it  is  b,  fact;  and  a  hundred  thousand 
men  know  it  to  be  such. 

Last  winter  (1911-12),  because  the  deer  of  Montana  v/ere  driven  by  cold 
and  hunger  out  of  the  mountains  and  far  down  into  the  ranchmen's  val- 


THE  PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG  GAME  \159 

leys,  eleven  thousand  of  them  were  ruthlessly  slaughtered.  State  Game 
Warden  Avare  says  that  often  heads  of  families  took  out  as  many  licenses 
as  there  were  persons  in  the  family,  and  the  whole  quota  was  killed. 
Such  people  deserve  to  go  deerless  into  the  future;  but  we  can  not  allow 
them  to  rob  innocent  people. 

OUR  SPECIES  OF  BIG  GAME 

The  Prong-Horned  Antelope,  unique  and  wonderful,  will  be  one 
of  the  first  species  of  North  American  big  game  to  become  totally  extinct.  We 
may  see  this  come  to  pass  within  twenty  years.  They  can  not  be  bred  in 
protection,  save  in  very  large  fenced  ranges.  They  are  delicate,  capricious, 
and  easily  upset.  They  die  literally  "at  the  drop  of  a  hat."  They  are 
quite  subject  to  actinomycosis  (lumpy-jaw),  which  in  wild  animals  is 
incurable. 

Already  all  the  states  that  possess  wild  antelope,  except  Nevada,  have 
passed  laws  giving  that  species  long  close  seasons ;  which  is  highly  credit- 
able to  the  states  that  have  done  their  duty.  Nevada  must  get  in  line 
at  the  next  session  of  her  legislature ! 

In  1908,  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer  published  in  his  annual  report  of  "Progress 
in  Game  Protection  "  the  following  in  regard  to  the  prong-horned  antelope : 

' '  Antelope  are  still  found  in  diminished  numbers  in  fourteen  western 
states.  A  considerable  number  were  killed  during  the  year  in  Montana, 
where  the  species  seems  to  have  suffered  more  than  elsewhere  since  the 
season  was  opened  in  1907. 

"A  striking  illustration  of  the  decrease  of  the  antelope  is  afforded  by 
Colorado.  In  1898  the  State  Warden  estimated  that  there  were  25,000 
in  the  state,  whereas  in  1908  the  Game  Commissioner  places  the  number 
at  only  2,000.  The  total  number  of  antelope  now  in  the  United  States 
probably  does  not  exceed  17,000,  distributed  approximately  as  follows: 

Colorado 2,000  Yellowstone  Park 2,000 

Idaho 200  Other  States 2,000 

Montana 4,000  


New  Mexico 1,300  Saskatchewan 2,000 

Oregon 1,500  

Wyoming 4,000  19,000 

To-day  (1912),  Dr.  Palmer  says  the  total  number  of  antelope  is  less 
than  it  was  in  1908,  and  in  spite  of  protection  the  number  is  steadily 
diminishing.  This  is  indeed  serious  news.  The  existing  bands,  already 
small,  are  steadily  growing  smaller.  The  antelope  are  killed  lawlessl3^ 
and  the  crimes  of  such  slaughter  are,  in  nearly  every  instance,  success- 
fully concealed. 

Previously,  we  have  based  strong  hopes  for  the  preservation  of  the 
antelope  species  on  the  herd  in  the  Yellowstone  Park,  but  those  animals 
are  vanishing  fearfully  fast.  In  1906,  Dr.  Palmer  reported  that  "About 
fifteen  hundred  antelope  came  down  to  the  feeding  grounds  near  the 
haystacks  in  the  vicinity  of  Gardiner."     In  1908  the  Yellowstone  Park 


160 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


PRONG-HORNED  ANTELOPE 


was  credited  with  two  thousand  head.  To-day,  the  number  alive,  by 
actual  count,  is  only  five  hundred  head ;  and  this  after  twenty-five  years 
of  protection!  Where  have  the  others  gone?  This  shows,  alas!  that 
perpetual  close  seasons  can  not  always  bring  back  the  vanished  thousands 
of  game  I 

Here  is  a  reHable  report  (June  29,  1912)  regarding  the  prong-horned 
antelope  in  Lower  California,  from  E.  W.  Nelson:  "Antelope  formerly 
ranged  over  nearly  the  entire  length  of  Lower  California,  but  are  now 
gone  from  a  large  part  of  their  ancient  range,  and  their  steadily  decreasing 
numbers  indicate  their  early  extinction  throughout  the  peninsula." 

In  captivity  the  antelope  is  exasperatingly  delicate  and  short-lived. 
It  has  about  as  much  stamina  as  a  pet  monkey.  As  an  exhibition  animal 
in  zoological  gardens  and  parks  it  is  a  failure;  for  it  always  looks  faded, 
spiritless  and  dead,  like  a  stuffed  animal  ready  to  be  thrown  into  the 
discard.  Zoologists  can  not  save  the  prong-horn  species  save  at  long 
range,  in  preserves  so  huge  that  the  sensitive  little  beast  will  not  even 
suspect  that  it  is  confined. 

Two  serious  attempts  have  been  made  to  transplant  and  acclimatize 
the  antelope — in  the  Wichita  National  Bison  Range,  in  Oklahoma,  and 


THE  PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG   GAME  161 

in  the  Montana  Bison  Range,  at  Ravalli.  In  1911  the  Boone  and  Crockett- 
Club  provided  a  fund  which  defrayed  the  expenses  of  shipping  from  the 
Yellowstone  Park  a  small  nucleus  herd  to  each  of  those  ranges.  Eight 
were  sent  to  the  Wichita  Range,  of  which  five  arrived  alive.  Of  the  seven 
sent  to  the  Montana  Range,  four  arrived  alive  and  were  duly  set  free. 
While  it  seems  a  pity  to  take  specimens  from  the  Yellowstone  Park  herd, 
the  disagreeable  fact  is  that  there  is  no  other  source  on  which  to  draw 
for  breeding  stock. 

The  Provinces  of  Alberta  and  Saskatchewan,  in  Canada,  still  permit 
the  hunting  and  killing  of  antelope;  which  is  wholly  and  entirely  wrong. 

The  Big-Horn  Sheep. — Of  North  American  big  game,  the  big-horn 
of  the  Rockies  will  be,  after  the  antelope,  the  next  species  to  become 
extinct  outside  of  protected  areas.  In  the  United  States  that  event  is 
fast  approaching.  It  is  far  nearer  than  even  the  big-game  sportsmen 
rea-lize.  There  are  to-day  only  two  localities  in  the  four  states  that  still 
think  they  have  killable  sheep,  in  which  it  is  worth  while  to  go  sheep- 
hunting.  One  is  in  Montana,  and  the  other  is  in  Wyoming.  In  the  United 
States  a  really  big,  creditable  ram  may  now  be  regarded  as  an  impossi- 
bility. There  are  now  perhaps  half  a  dozen  guides  who  can  find  killable 
sheep  in  our  country,  but  the  game  is  nearly  always  young  rams,  under 
live  years  of  age. 

That  Wyoming,  Montana,  Idaho  and  Washington  still  continue  to 
permit  sheep  slaughter  is  outrageous.  Their  answer  is  that  "  The  sports- 
men won't  stand  for  stopping  it  altogether."  I  will  add: — and  the  great 
mass  of  peeople  are  too  criminally  indifferent  to  take  a  hand  in  the 
matter,  and  do  their  duty  regardless  of  the  men  of  blood. 

The  seed  stock  of  big-horn  sheep  now  alive  in  the  United  States 
aggregates  a  pitifully  small  number.  After  twenty-five  years  of  unbroken 
protection  in  Colorado,  Dillon  Wallace  estimates,  after  an  investigation 
on  the  ground,  that  the  state  possesses  perhaps  thirty-five  hundred  head. 
He  credits  Montana  and  Wyoming  with  five  hundred  each — which  I 
think  is  far  too  liberal  a  number.  I  do  not  believe  that  either  of  those 
states  contains  more  than  one  hundred  unprotected  sheep,  at  the  very 
utmost  limit.     If  there  are  more,  where  are  they? 

In  the  Yellowstone  Park  there  are  210  head,  safe  and  sound,  and 
slowly  increasing.  I  can  not  understand  why  they  have  not  increased 
more  rapidly  than  they  have.  In  Glacier  Park,  now  under  permanent 
protection,  three  guides  on  Lake  McDonald,  in  1910,  estimated  the  num- 
ber of  sheep  at  seven  hundred.  Idaho  has  in  her  rugged  Bitter  Root  and 
Clearwater  Mountains  and  elsewhere,  a  remnant  of  possibly  two  hundred 
sheep,  and  Washington  has  only  what  chemists  call  "a  trace."  It  has 
recently  been  discovered  that  California  still  contains  a  few  sheep,  and 
in  southwestern  Nevada  there  are  a  few  more. 

In  Utah,  the  big-horn  species  is  probably  quite  extinct.  In  Ar- 
izona, there  are  a  few  very  small  bands,  very  widely  scattered.  They 
are  in  the  Santa  Catalina  Mountains,  the  Grand  Canyon  country,  the 
Gila  Range,  and  the  Quitovaquita  Mountains,  near  Sonoyta.    But  who 


Itj2  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

can  protect  from  slaughter  those  Arizona  sheep?  Absolutely  no  one? 
They  are  too  few  and  too  widely  scattered  for  the  game  wardens  to  keep 
in  touch  with  them.  The  "prospectors"  have  them  entirely  at  their 
mercy,  and  the  world  well  knows  what  prospectors'  "mercy"  to  edible 
big  game  looks  like  on  the  ground.  It  leads  straight  to  the  frying-pan, 
the  coyotes  and  the  vultures. 

The  Lower  California  peninsula  contains  about  five  hundred  moun- 
tain sheep,  without  the  slightest  protection  save  low,  desert  mountains, 
heat  and  thirst.  But  that  is  no  real  protection  whatever.  Those  sheep 
are  too  fine  to  be  butchered  the  way  they  have  been,  and  now  are  being, 
butchered.  In  1908  I  strongly  called  the  attention  of  the  Mexican  Gov- 
ernment to  the  situation;  and  the  Department©  de  Fomento  secured  the 
issue  of  an  executive  order  forbidding  the  hunting  of  any  big  game  in 
Lower  California  without  the  written  authority  of  the  government.  I 
am  sure,  however,  that  owing  to  the  political  and  military  upheaval 
it  never  stopped  the  slaughter  of  sheep.  In  such  easy  mountains  as  those 
of  Lower  California,  it  is  a  simple  matter  to  exterminate  quickly  all  the 
mountain  sheep  that  they  possess.  The  time  for  President  Madero 
and  his  cabinet  to  inaugurate  serious  protective  measures  has  full}' 
arrived. 

Both  British  Columbia  and  Alberta  have  even  yet  fine  herds  of  big- 
horn, and  we  can  count  three  large  game  preserves  in  which  they  are 
protected.  They  are  Goat  Mountain  Park  (East  Kootenay  district,  be- 
tween the  Elk  and  Bull  Rivers) ;  the  Rocky  Mountains  Park,  near 
Banff,  and  Waterton  Lakes  Park,  in  the  southwestern  corner  of  Alberta. 

In  view  of  the  number  of  men  who  desire  to  hunt  them,  the  bag  limit 
on  big-horn  rams  in  British  Columbia  and  Alberta  still  is  too  liberal,  by 
half.  One  ram  per  year  for  one  man  is  quite  enough;  quite  as  much  so 
as  one  moose  is  the  limit  everywhere.  To-day  "a  big,  old  ram"  is 
regarded  by  sportsmen  as  a  much  more  desirable  and  creditable  trophy 
than  a  moose;  because  moose-killing  is  easy,  and  the  bagging  of  an  old 
mountain  ram  in  real  mountains  requires  five  times  as  much  effort  and 
skill. 

The  splendid  high  and  rugged  mountains  of  British  Columbia  and 
Alberta  form  an  ideal  home  for  the  big-horn  (and  mountain  goat),  and  it 
would  be  an  international  calamity  for  that  region  to  be  denuded  of  its 
splendid  big  game.  With  resolute  intent  and  judicial  treatment  that 
region  can  remain  a  rich  and  valuable  hunting  ground  for  five  hundred 
years  to  come.  Under  falsely  "liberal"  laws,  it  can  be  shot  into  a  state 
of  complete  desolation  within  ten  years,  or  even  less. 

Other  Mountain  Sheep. — In  northern  British  Columbia,  north  of 
Iskoot  Lake,  there  lies  a  tremendous  region,  extending  to  the  Arctic 
Ocean,  and  comprehending  the  whole  area  between  the  Rocky  Mountain 
continental  divide  and  the  waters  of  the  Pacific.  Over  the  southern  end 
of  this  great  wilderness  ranges  the  black  mountain  sheep,  and  throtighoul 
the  remainder,  with  many  sheepless  intervals,  is  scattered  the  white 
mountain  sheep. 


THE  PRESENT  AND    FUTURE  OF  BIG  GAME  163 

Owing  to  the  immensity  of  this  wilderness,  the  well-nigh  total  lack 
of  railroads  and  also  of  navigable  waters,  excepting  the  Yukon,  it  will 
not  be  thoroughly  "opened  up"  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  The  few 
resolute  and  pneumonia-proof  sportsmen  who  can  wade  into  the  country, 
pulling  boats  through  icy-cold  mountain  streams,  are  not  going  to  de- 
vastate those  millions  of  mountains  of  their  big  game.  The  few  head  of 
game  which  sportsmen  can  and  will  take  out  of  the  great  northwestern 
wilderness  during  the  next  twenty-five  years  will  hardly  be  missed  from 
the  grand  total,  even  though  a  few  easily-accessible  localities  are  shot 
out.  It  is  the  deadly  resident  trappers,  hunters  and  prospectors  who 
mus:t  be  feared!  And  again, — who  can  control  them?  Can  any  wilder- 
ness government  on  earth  make  it  possible""  Therefore,  in  time,  even  the 
great  wilderness  will  be  denuded  of  big  game.  This  is  absolutely  fixed  and 
certain;  for  within  much  less  than  another  century,  every  square  rod  of 
it  will  have  been  gone  over  by  prospectors,  lumbermen,  trappers  and 
skin-hunters,  and  raked  again  and  again  with  fine-toothed  combs.  A 
railway  line  to  Dawson,  the  Copper  River  and  Cook  Inlet  is  to-day  merely 
the  next  thing  to  expect,  after  Canada's  present  railway  program  has 
been  wrought  out. 

Yes,  indeed!  In  time  the  wilderness  will  be  opened  up,  and  the  big 
game  will  all  be  shot  out,  save  from  the  protected  areas. 

The  Mountain  Goat. — Even  yet,  this  species  is  not  wholly  extinct 
in  the  United  States.  It  survives  in  Glacier  Park,  Montana,  and  the 
number  estimated  in  that  region  by  three  guide  friends  is  too  astound - 
ingly  large  to  mention. 

This  animal  is  much  inore  easily  killed  than  the  big-horn.  Its  white 
coat  renders  it  fatally  conspicuous  at  long  range  during  the  best  hunting 
season;  it  is  almost  devoid  of  fear,  and  it  takes  altogether  too  many 
chances  on  man.  Thanks  to  the  rage  for  sheep  horns,  the  average  sports- 
man's view-point  regarding  wild  life  ranks  a  goat  head  about  six  contours 
below  "old  ram  "  heads,  in  desirability.  Furthermore,  most  guides  regard 
the  flesh  of  the  goat  as  almost  unfit  for  use  as  food,  and  far  inferior  to 
that  of  the  big-horn.  These  reasons,  taken  together,  render  the  goats 
much  less  persecuted  by  the  sportsmen,  ranchmen  and  prospectors  who 
enter  the  home  of  the  two  species.  It  was  because  of  this  indifference 
toward  goats  that  in  1905  Mr.  John  M.  Phillips  and  his  party  saw  243 
goats  in  thirty  days  in  Goat  Mountain  Park,  and  only  fourteen  sheep. 

Unless  the  preferences  of  western  sportsmen  and  gunners  change  very 
considerably,  the  coast  mountains  of  the  great  northwestern  wilderness 
will  remain  stocked  with  wild  mountain  goats  until  long  after  the  last 
big-horn  has  been  shot  to  death.  Fortunately,  the  skin  of  the  mountain 
goat  has  no  commercial  value.  I  think  it  was  in  1887  that  I  purchased, 
in  Denver,  150  nicely  tanned  skins  of  our  wild  white  goat  at  fifty  cents 
each!  They  were  wanted  for  the  first  exhibit  ever  made  to  illustrate  the 
extermination  of  American  large  mammals,  and  they  were  shown  at  the 
Louisville  Exposition.  It  must  have  cost  the  price  of  those  skins  to  tan 
them ;  and  I  was  pleased  to  know  that  some  one  lost  money  on  the  venture. 


164 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


MAP  OF  THE  FORMER  AND  EXISTING  RANGES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  ELK 
From  "Life  History  of  Northern  Animals,"  Copyright  1909  by  E.  T.  Seton 

At  present  the  mountain  goat  extends  from  north-western  Montana 
to  the  head  of  Cook  Inlet,  but  it  is  not  found  in  the  interior  or  in  the  Yukon 
valley.  Whenever  man  decides  that  the  species  has  lived  long  enough, 
he  can  quickly  and  easily  exterminate  it.  It  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
and  interesting  wild  animals  on  this  continent,  and  there  is  not  the 
slightest  excuse  for  shooting  it,  save  as  a  specimen  of  natural  history. 
Like  the  antelope,  it  is  so  unique  as  a  natural  curiosity  that  it  deserves 
to  be  taken  out  of  the  ranks  of  animals  that  are  regularly  pursued  as 
game. 

The  Elk  —The  story  of  the  progressive  extermination  of  the  Ameri- 
can elk,  or  wapiti,  covers  practically  the  same  territory  as  the  tragedy  of 
the  American  bison — one-third  of  the  mainland  of  North  America.  The 
former  range  of  the  elk  covered  absolutely  the  garden  ground  of  our 
continent,  omitting  the  arid  region.  Its  boundary  extended  from  central 
Massachusetts  to  northern  Georgia,  southern  Illinois,  northern  Texas 
and  central  New  Mexico,  central  Arizona,  the  whole  Rocky  Mountain 
region  up  to  the  Peace  River,  and  Manitoba.  It  skipped  the  arid  country 
west  of  the  Rockies,  but  it  embraced  practically  the  whole  Pacific  slope 
from  central  California  to  the  north  end  of  Vancouver  Island.    Mr.  Seton 


THE  PRESENT  AND    FUTURE  OF  BIG  GAME 


165 


roughly  calculated  the  former  range  of  canadensis  at  two  and  a  half 
million  square  miles,  and  adds:  "We  are  safe,  therefore,  in  believing  that 
in  those  days  there  may  have  been  ten  million  head." 

The  range  of  the  elk  covered  a  magnificent  domain.  The  map  pre- 
pared by  Mr.  Ernest  T.  Seton,  after  twenty  years  of  research,  is  the 
last  word  on  the  subject.  It  appears  on  page  43,  Vol.  I,  of  his  great  work, 
"Life  Histories  of  Northern  Animals,"  and  I  have  the  permission  of 
author  and  publisher  to  reproduce  it  here,  as  an  object  lesson  in  wild- 
animal  extermination.  Mr.  Seton  recognizes  (for  convenience,  only?) 
four  forms  of  American  elk,  two  of  which,  C.  nannodes  and  occidentalism 
still  exist  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  The  fourth,  Cervus  merriami,  was  un- 
doubtedly a  valid  species.  It  lived  in  Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  but 
became  totally  extinct  near  the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 

In  1909  Mr.  Seton  published  in  the  work  referred  to  above  a  remark- 
ably close  estimate  of  the  number  of  elk  then  alive  in  North  America. 
Recently,  a  rough  count — the  first  ever  made — of  the  elk  in  and  around 
the  Yellowstone  Park,  revealed  the  real  number  of  that  largest  contingent. 
By  taking  those  results,  and  Mr.  Seton's  figures  for  elk  outside  the 
United  States,  we  obtain  the  following  very  close  approximation  of  the 
wild  elk  alive  in  North  America  in  1912: 


Locality  Number 

Yellowstone  Park  and  vicinity 47,000 

Idaho  (permanently) , 600 

Washington 1,200 

Oregon 500 

California 400 

New  York,  Adirondacks 400 

Minnesota 50 

Vancouver  Island 2,000 

British  Columbia  (S.-E.) 200 

Alberta 1,000 

Saskatchewan 500 

In  various  Parks  and  Zoos 1,000 

Total,  for  all  America.  54,850 


Authority 
U.  S.  Biological  Survey. 

Game  Warden  Chris.  Morgenroth. 


State  Conservation  Commission. 

E.  T.  Seton. 

E.  T.  Seton. 

E.  T.  Seton. 

E.  T.  Seton. 

E.  T.  Seton 

E.  T.  Seton. 


In  1905,  a  herd  of  twenty  of  the  so-called  dwarf  elk  of  the  San  Joaquin 
Valley,  California,  were  taken  to  the  Sequoia  National  Park, and  placed 
in  a  fenced  range  that  had  been  established  for  it  on  the  Kaweah  River. 

The  extermination  of  the  wapiti  began  with  the  settlement  of  the 
American  colonies.  Naturally,  the  largest  animals  were  the  ones  most 
eagerly  sought  by  the  meat-hungry  pioneers,  and  the  elk  and  bison  were 
the  first  game  species  to  disappear.  The  colonists  believed  in  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,  and  we  are  glad  that  they  did.  The  one  thing  that  a  hungry 
pioneer  cannot  withstand  is — temptation — in  a  form  that  embraces  five 
hundred  pounds  of  succulent  flesh.  And  let  it  not  be  supposed  that  in 
the  eastern  states  there  were  only  a  few  elk.  The  Pennsylvania  salt  licks 
were  crowded  with  them,  and  the  early  writers  describe  them  as  existing 
in  "immense  bands"  and  "great  numbers." 


166  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Of  course  it  is  impossible  for  wild  animals  of  great  size  to  exist  in  coun- 
tries that  are  covered  with  farms,  villages  and  people.  Under  such  con- 
ditions the  wild  and  the  tame  cannot  harmonize.  It  is  a  fact,  however, 
that  elk  could  exist  and  thrive  in  every  national  forest  and  national  park 
in  our  country,  and  also  on  uncountable  hundreds  of  thousands  of  rough, 
wild,  tiinbcred  hills  and  mountains  such  as  exist  in  probably  twenty-five 
different  states.  There  is  no  reason,  except  man's  short-sighted  greed 
and  foolishness,  why  there  are  not  to-day  one  hundred  thousand  elk  living 
in  the  Allegheny  Mountains,  furnishing  each  year  fifty  thousand  three- 
year-old  males  as  free  food  for  the  people. 

The  trouble  is, — the  greedy  habitants  could  not  be  induced  to  kill  only 
the  three-year-old-males,  in  the  fall,  and  let  the  cows,  calves  and  breeding 
bulls  alone!  By  sensible  management  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  Sierra 
Nevadas  and  the  Coast  Range  would  support  enough  wild  elk  to  feed  a 
million  people.  But  we  Americans  seem  utterly  incapable  of  maintaining 
an^^ where  from  decade  to  decade  a  large  and  really  valuable  supply  of 
wild  game.  Outside  the  Yellowstone  Park  and  northwestern  Wyoming, 
the  American  elk  exists  only  in  small  bands — mere  remnants  and  samples 
of  the  millions  we  could  and  should  have. 

If  they  could  be  protected,  and  the  surplus  presently  killed  according 
to  some  rational,  working  system,  then  every  national  forest  in  the  United 
States  should  he  stocked  ivith  elk!  In  view  of  the  awful  cost  of  beef  (to- 
day 10>2  cents  per  pound  in  Chicago  on  the  hoof!),  it  is  high  time  that 
we  should  consider  the  raising  of  game  on  the  public  domain  on  such 
lines  that  it  would  form  a  valuable  food  supply  without  diminishing  the 
value  of  the  forests. 

Just  now  (1912)  the  American  people  are  sorely  puzzled  by  a  remark- 
able elk  problem  that  each  winter  is  presented  for  solution  in  the  Jackson 
Hole  country,  Wyoming.  Driven  southward  by  the  deep  snows  of  winter, 
the  elk  thousands  that  in  summer  graze  and  grow  fat  in  the  Yellowstone 
Park  march  down  into  Jackson  Hole,  to  find  in  those  valleys  less  snow 
and  more  food.  Now,  it  happens  that  the  best  and  most  of  the  former 
winter  grazing  grounds  of  the  elk  are  covered  by  fenced  ranches!  As  a 
result,  the  elk  that  strive  to  winter  there,  about  fifteen  thousand  head, 
are  each  winter  threatened  with  starvation;  and  during  three  or  four 
winters  of  recent  date,  an  aggregate  of  several  thousand  calves,  weak 
yearlings  and  weakened  cows  perished  of  hunger.  The  winters  of  1908, 
1909  and  1910  were  progressivelv  more  and  more  severe;  and  1911  saw 
about  2500  deaths,  (S.  N.  Lcek)^ 

In  1909-10,  the  State  of  Wyoming  spent  $7,000  for  hay,  and  fed  it  to 
the  starving  elk.  In  1911,  Wyoming  spent  $5,000  more,  and  appealed  to 
Congress  for  help.  Thanks  to  the  efforts  of  Senator  Lodge  and  others, 
Congress  instantly  responded  with  a  splendid  emergency  appropriation 
of  $20,000,  partly  for  the  purpose  of  feeding  the  elk,  and  also  to  meet  the 
cost  of  transporting  elsewhere  as  many  of  the  elk  as  it  might  seem  best 
to  move.    The  starving  of  the  elk  ceased  with  1911. 

Outdoor  Life  magazine  (Denver,  Colo.)  for  August,  1912,  contains  an 


THE   PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG   GAME 


167 


excel  ent  article  by  Dr.  W.  B.  Shore,  entitled,  "Trapping  and  Shipping 
Elk."  I  wish  I  could  reprint  it  entire,  for  the  solid  information  that  it 
contains.  It  gives  a  clear  and  comprehensive  account  of  last  spring's 
operations  by  the  Government  and  by  the  state  of  Montana  in  cap- 
turing and  shipping  elk  from  the  Yellowstone  Park  herd,  for  the  double 
purpose  of  diminishing  the  elk  surplus  in  the  Park  and  stocking  vacant 
ranges  elsewhere. 

The  operations  were  conducted  on  the  same  basis  as  the  shipping  of 
cattle — the  corral,  the  chute,  the  open  car,  and  the  car-load  in  bulk. 
Dr.  Shore  states  that  the  undertaking  was  really  no  more  difficult  than 
the  shipping  of  range  cattle;  but  the  presence  of  a  considerable  propor- 
tion of  young  and  tender  calves,  such  as  are  never  handled  with  beef 
cattle,  led  to  8.8  per  cent  of  deaths  in  transit.  The  deaths  and  the  per- 
centage are  nothing  at  which  to  be  surprised,  when  it  is  remembered, 
that  the  animals  had  just  come  through  a  hard  winter,  and  their  natural 
vitality  was  at  the  lowest  point  of  the  year. 

The  following  is  a  condensed  summary  of  the  results  of  the  work : 


Destination 

Numberof 
Elk 

Hours  on 
Road 

Killed  or 
Died  in  Car 

Died  After 
Unloading 

1  Car. 
1      " 

Startup,  Washington 

Hamilton,  Montana 

Thompson  Falls,  Montana  .... 

Stephensville,  Montana 

Deer  Lodge,  Montana 

Hamilton,  Montana 

60 :    calves, 
yearlings 
and  two- 
year  olds 
43:  cows  & 
calves 

40 

36 

40 

40 

46 

94 
30 

24 

4  days;  un- 
loaded & 
fed  twice 

11 

4 

2 

1 
2 

0 
7 

7 

1 

0 
1 
0 
0 

Mt.  Vernon,  Washington 

0 

305 

27 

9 

The  total  deaths  in  transit  and  after,  of  36  elk  out  of  305,  amounted  to  1 1.4  per  cent. 
All  those  shipped  to  Montana  points  were  shipped  by  the  state  of  Montana. 

In  order  to  provide  adequate  winter  grazing  grounds  for  the  Yellow- 
stone-Wyoming elk,  it  seems  imperative  that  the  national  government 
should  expend  between  $30,000  and  $40,000  in  buying  back  from  ranch- 
men certain  areas  in  the  Jackson  valley,  particularly  a  tract  known  as 
"the  swamp,"  and  others  on  the  surrounding  foothills  where  the  herds 
annually  go  to  graze  in  winter.  A  measure  to  render  this  possible  was 
presented  to  Congress  in  the  winter  of  1912,  and  without  opposition  an 
appropriation  of  $45,000  was  made. 

The  splendid  photographs  of  the  elk  herds  that  recently  have  been 
made  by  S.  N.  Leek,  of  Jackson  Hole,  clearly  reveal  the  fact  that  the 


I<i8 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


HUNGRY  ELK  IN  JACKSON   HOLE.  WYOMING 
Part  of  a  Herd  of  About  2,503  Head,  being  fed  on  hay,  in  the  Winter  of  1910-11 
Note  the  Absence  of  Adult  Bulls.     Copyright,  1911,  by  S.  N.  Leek 

herds  now  consist  chiefly  of  cows,  calves,  yearHngs  and  young  bulls  with 
small  antlers.  In  one  photograph  showing  about  twenty-five  hundred 
elk,  there  are  not  visible  even  half  a  dozen  pairs  of  antlers  that  belong  to 
adult  bulls.  There  should  be  a  hundred!  This  condition  means  that  the 
best  bulls,  with  the  finest  heads,  are  constantly  being  ::elected  and  killed 
by  sportsmen  and  others  who  want  their  heads;  and  the  young,  imma- 
ture bulls  are  left  to  do  the  breeding  that  alone  will  sustain  the  species. 

It  is  a  well-known  principle  in  stock-breeding  that  sires  should  be 
fully  adult,  of  maximum  strength,  and  in  the  prime  of  life.  No  stock- 
breeder in  his  senses  ever  thinks  of  breeding  from  a  youthful,  immature 
sire.    The  result  would  be  weak  offspring  not  up  to  the  standard. 

This  inexorable  law  of  inheritance  and  transmission  is  just  as  much 
a  law  for  the  elk,  moose  and  deer  of  North  America  as  it  is  for  domestic 
cattle  and  horses.  If  the  present  conditions  in  the  Wyoming  elk  herds 
continue  to  prevail  for  several  generations,  as  sure  as  time  goes  on  we 
shall  see  a  marked  deterioration  in  the  size  and  antlers  of  the  elk. 

If  the  foundation  principles  of  stock-breeding  are  correct,  then  it  is  im- 
possible to  maintain  any  large-mammal  species  at  its  zenith  of  size, 
strength  and  virility  by  continuous  breeding  of  the  young  and  imma- 
ture males.  By  some  sportsmen  it  is  believed  that  through  long-con- 
tinued killing  of  the  finest  and  largest  males,  the  red  deer  of  Europe 
have  been  growing  smaller;  but  on  that  point  I  am  not  prepared  to 
offer  evidence. 


THE  PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG  GAME  169 

In  regard  to  the  in-breeding  of  the  elk  herds  in  large  open  parks  and 
preserves  throughout  North  America,  there  are  positively  no  ill  effects 
to  fear.  Wild  animals  that  are  closely  confined  generation  after  generation 
are  bound  to  deteriorate  physically;  but  with  healthy  wild  animals  liv- 
ing in  large  open  ranges,  feeding  and  breeding  naturally,  the  in-breed- 
ing that  occurs  produces  no  deterioration. 

In  the  twin  certainties  of  over-population,  and  deterioration  from 
excessive  killing  of  the  good  sires,  we  have  to  face  two  new  problems  of 
very  decided  importance.  Nothing  short  of  very  radical  measures  will 
provide  a  remedy.  For  the  immediate  future,  I  can  offer  a  solution. 
While  it  seems  almost  impossible  deliberately  to  kill  females,  I  think  that 
the  present  is  a  very  exceptional  case,  and  one  that  compels  us  to  apply 
the  painful  remedy  that  I  now  propose. 

Premises:  1. — There    are  at  present  too  many  breeding  cows  in  the 
Yellowstone  herds. 
2.— There  are  far  too  few  good  breeding  bulls. 

Conclusion: — For  five  years,  entirely  prohibit  the  killing  of  adult 
male  elk,  and  kill  only  females,  and  young  males.  This  would  gradually 
diminish  the  number  of  calves  born  each  year,  by  about  2,500,  and  by 
the  end  of  five  years  it  would  reduce  the  number,  and  the  annual  birth, 
of  females  to  a  figure  sufficiently  limited  that  the  herds  could  be  main- 
tained on  existing  ranges. 

Corollary. — At  the  end  of  five  years,  stop  killing  females,  and  kill 
only  young  males.  This  plan  would  permit  a  large  number  of  bull  elk 
to  mature;  and  then  the  largest  and  strongest  animals  would  do  the 
breeding, — just  as  Nature  always  intends  shall  be  done. 

South  America 

Of  all  the  big-game  regions  of  the  earth.  South  America  is  the  poorest. 
Of  hoofed  game  she  possesses  only  a  dozen  species  that  are  worth  the 
attention  of  sportsmen;  and  like  all  other  animal  life  in  that  land  of 
little  game,  they  are  desperately  hard  to  find.  In  South  America  you 
must  work  your  heart  out  in  order  to  get  either  game  or  specimens  that 
will  be  worth  showing. 

At  present,  we  need  not  worry  about  the  marsh  deer,  the  pampas 
deer,  the  guemal,  or  the  venado,  nor  the  tapir,  jaguar,  ocelot  and  bears. 
All  these  species  are  abundantly  able  to  take  care  of  themselves;  and  to 
find  and  kill  any  one  of  them  is  a  man's  task.  In  Patagonia  the  natives 
do  wastefully  slaughter  the  guanacos;  and  there  are  times  also  when 
great  numbers  of  guanacos  come  down  in  winter  to  certain  mountain 
lakes,  presumably  in  search  of  food,  and  perish  by  hundreds  through 
starvation.     (H.  Hesketh  Prichard.) 

Mexico 

About  ten  years  more  will  see  the  extinction  of  the  mountain  sheep 
of  Lower  California,— in  the  wake  of  the  recently  exterminated  Mexican 


170  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

sheep  of  the  Santa  Maria  Lakes  region.  In  1908,  I  solemnly  warned  the 
government  of  President  Diaz,  and  at  that  time  the  Mexican  government 
expressed  much  concern. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  just  now  political  conditions  are  completely 
estopping  wild-life  protection  in  Mexico;  but  it  is  true.  If  the  code  of 
proposed  laws  that  I  drew  up  (by  request)  in  1908  and  submitted  to 
Minister  Molina  were  adopted,  it  would  have  a  good  effect  on  the  fauna 
of  Mexico. 

In  Mexico  there  is  little  hoofed  game  to  kill, — deer  of  the  white-tail 
groups,  seven  or  eight  species;  the  desert  mule  deer;  the  brocket;  the 
prong-horned  antelope,  the  mountain  sheep  and  the  peccary.  The  deer 
will  not  so  easily  be  exterminated,  but  the  antelope  and  sheep  will  be 
utterly  destroyed.  They  will  be  the  first  to  go ;  and  I  think  they  can  not 
by  any  possibility  last  longer  than  ten  years.  Is  it  not  too  bad  that  Mexico 
should  permit  her  finest  species  of  hoofed  and  horned  game  to  be  oblit- 
erated before  she  awakens  to  the  desirability  of  conservation!  The 
Mexicans  could  protect  their  small  stock  of  big  game  if  they  would ;  but 
in  Lower  California  they  are  leasing  huge  tracts  of  land  to  cattle  com- 
panies, and  they  permit  the  lessees  to  kill  all  the  wild  game  they  please 
on  their  leased  lands,  even  with  the  aid  of  dogs.  This  is  a  vicious  and 
fatal  system,  and  contrary  to  all  the  laws  of  nations. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  OF  NORTH  AMERICAN  BIG  GAME 

(Concluded) 

The  White-tailed  Deer. — Five  hundred  years  hence,  when  the 
greed  and  rapacity  of  "civilized"  man  has  completed  the  loot  and  ruin 
of  the  continent  of  North  America,  the  white-tailed  deer  will  be  the  last 
species  of  our  big  game  to  be  exterminated.  Its  mental  traits,  its  size, 
its  color  and  its  habits  all  combine  to  render  it  the  most  persistent  of 
our  large  animals,  and  the  best  fitted  to  survive.  It  neither  bawls  nor 
bugles  to  attract  its  enemies,  it  can  not  be  called  to  a  sportsman,  like 
the  moose,  and  it  sticks  to  its  timber  with  rare  and  commendable  close- 
ness. When  it  sees  a  strange  living  thing  walking  erect,  it  does  not  stop 
to  stare  and  catch  soft-nosed  bullets,  but  dashes  away  in  quest  of  solitude. 

The  worst  shooting  that  I  ever  did  or  saw  done  at  game  was  at 
running  white-tailed  deer,  in  the  Montana  river  bottoms. 

For  the  reasons  given,  the  white-tail  exists  and  persists  in  a  hundred 
United  States  localities  from  which  all  other  big  game  save  the  black 
bear  have  been  exterminated.  For  example,  in  our  Adirondacks  the  moose 
were  exterminated  years  and  years  ago,  but  the  beloved  wilderness  called 
the  "North  Woods"  still  is  populated  by  about  20,000  deer,  and  about 
8,000  are  killed  annually.  The  deer  of  Maine  are  sufficiently  numerous 
that  in  1909  a  total  of  15,879  were  killed.  With  some  assistance  from 
the  thin  sprinkling  of  moose  and  caribou,  the  deer  of  Maine  annually 
draw  into  that  state,  for  permanent  dedication,  a  huge  sum  of  money, 
variously  estimated  at  from  $1,000,000  to  $2,000,000.  In  spite  of  heavy 
slaughter,  and  vigorous  attempts  at  extermination  by  over-shooting, 
the  deer  of  northern  Michigan  obstinately  refuse  to  be  wiped  out. 

There  is,  however,  a  large  group  of  states  in  which  this  species  has 
been  exterminated.  The  states  comprising  it  are  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois, 
Iowa,  and  adjacent  portions  of  seven  other  states. 

As  if  to  shame  the  people  of  Iowa,  a  curious  deer  episode  is  recorded. 
In  1885,  W.  B.  Cupp3^  of  Avoca,  Iowa,  purchased  five  deer,  and  placed 
them  in  a  paddock  on  his  600-acre  farm.  By  1900  they  had  increased 
to  32  head;  and  then  one  night  some  one  kindly  opened  the  gate  of  their 
enclosure,  and  gave  them  the  freedom  of  the  city.  Mr.  Cuppy  made  no 
effort  to  capture  them,  possibly  because  they  decided  to  annex  his  farm 
as  their  habitat.  When  a  neighbor  led  them  with  a  bait  of  corn  to  their 
owner's  door,  he  declined  to  impound  them,  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
unnecessary. 


172 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


By  1912,  those  deer  had  increased  to  400,  and  the  portion  of  this  story 
that  no  one  will  believe  is  this:  they  spread  all  through  the  suburbs 
and  hinterland  farms  of  Avoca,  and  the  people  not  only  failed  to  assas- 
sinate all  of  them  and  eat  them,  but  they  actually  killed  only  a  few,  protected 
the  rest,  and  made  pets  of  many!  Queer  people,  those  men  and  boys  of 
Avoca.  Nearly  everywhere  else  in  the  world  that  I  know,  that  history 
would  have  been  ended  differently.  Here  in  the  East,  90  per  cent  of 
our  people  are  like  the  Avocans,  but  the  other  10  per  cent  think  only  of 
slaying  and  eating,  sans  mercy,  sans  decency,  sans  law.  Now  the  State 
of  Iowa  has  taken  hold,  to  capture  some  of  those  deer,  and  set  them  free 
in  other  portions  of  the  state. 

Elsewhere  I  shall  note  the  quick  and  thorough  success  with  which 
the  white-tailed  deer  has  been  brought  back  in  Vermont,  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  and  southern  New  York. 

No  state  having  waste  lands  covered  with  brush  or  timber  need  be 
without  the  ubiquitous  white-tailed  deer.  Give  them  a  semblance  of  a 
fair  show,  and  they  will  live  and  breed  with  surprising  fecundity  and 
persistence.  If  you  start  a  park  herd  with  ten  does,  soon  you  will  have 
more  deer  than  you  will  know  how  to  dispose  of,  unless  you  market  them 
under  a  Bayne  law,  duly  tagged  by  the  state.  In  close  confinement  this 
species  fares  rather  poorly.  In  large  preserves  it  does  well,  but  during 
the  rutting  season  the  bucks  are  to  be  dreaded;  and  those  that  develop 
aggressive  traits  should  be  shot  and  marketed.  This  is  the  only  way  in 
which  the  deer  parks  of  England  are  kept  safe  for  unarmed  people. 

Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer  has  taken  much  pains  to  ascertain  the  number  of 
deer  killed  in  the  eastern  United  States.  His  records,  as  published  in 
May,  1910,  are  as  follows: 


State 

1908 

1909 

1910 

State 

1908 

1909 

1910 

Maine 

15,000 

(a) 
2,700 
6,000 

500 

9,076 

11,000 

6,000 

107 

16 

15,879 

(a) 

4,736 

9,000 

(a) 

500 

6,641 

6,000 

6,000 

51 

13 

15,000 

(a) 

3,649 

9,000 

120 

800 

13,347 

6,000 

3,147 

49 

6 

Virginia 

North  Carolina . 
South  Carolina  . 

Georgia 

Florida 

Alabama 

Mississippi 

Louisiana 

Massachusetts.  . 

Total .... 

207 

(a) 

1,000 

(a) 

2,209 

152 

411 

5,500 

210 

(a) 

(a) 

367 

2,021 

148 

458 

5,470 

224 

New  Hampshire . 

Vermont 

New  York 

New  Jersey 

Pennsylvania.  .  .  . 

Michigan 

Wisconsin 

Minnesota 

West  Virginia. .  .  . 
Maryland 

(a) 

(a) 

369 

1,526 

132 

500 

5,000 

1,281 

59,878 

57,494 

60,150 

(a)  No  statistics  available. 

At  this  date  deer  hunting  is  not  permitted  at  any  time  in  In- 
diana, Illinois,  Iowa,  Nebraska  and  Kansas, — where  there  are  no  wild 
deer;  nor  in  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  Delaware,  Tennessee  or  Ken- 
tucky.     The   long   close    seasons   in    Massachusetts,    Connecticut    and 


THE   PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG   GAME  173 

southern  New  York  have  caused  a  great  migration  of  deer  into  those  once- 
depopulated  regions, — in  fact,  right  down  to  tide-water. 

The  Mule  DEER.^This  will  be  the  first  member  of  the  Deer  Family 
to  become  extinct  in  North  America  outside  of  the  protected  portions  of 
its  haunts.  Its  fatal  preference  for  open  ground  and  its  habit  of  pausing 
to  stare  at  the  hunter  have  been,  and  to  the  end  will  be,  its  undoing. 
Possibly  there  are  now  two  of  these  deer  in  the  United  States  and  British 
Columbia  for  every  98  that  existed  forty  years  ago,  but  no  more.  It  is 
a  deer  of  the  bad  lands  and  foothills,  and  its  curiosity  is  fatal. 

The  number  of  sportsmen  who  have  hunted  and  killed  this  fine  animal 
in  its  own  wild  and  picturesque  bad-lands  is  indeed  quite  small.  It  has 
been  four-fifths  exterminated  by  the  resident  hunter  and  ranchman,  and 
to-day  is  found  in  the  Rocky  Mountain  region  most  sparingly.  Ten 
years  ago  it  seemed  right  to  hunt  the  so-called  Rocky  Mountain  "black- 
tail"  in  northwestern  Montana,  because  so  many  deer  were  there  it  did 
not  seem  to  spell  extermination.  Now,  conditions  have  changed.  Since 
last  winter's  great  slaughter  in  northwestern  Montana,  of  11,000 
hungry  deer,  the  species  has  been  so  reduced  that  it  is  no  longer 
right  to  kill  mule  deer  anywhere  in  our  country,  and  a  universal  close 
season  for  five  years  is  the  duty  of  every  state  which  contains  that 
species. 

The  Real  Black-Tailed  Deer,  of  the  Pacific  coast,  {Odocoileus 
columbianus)  is,  to  most  sportsmen  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  East 
actually  less  known  than  the  okapi !  Not  one  out  of  every  hundred  of 
them  can  recognize  a  mounted  head  of  it  at  sight.  It  is  a  small,  deli- 
cately-formed, delicately-antlered  understudy  of  the  big  mule  deer,  and 
now  painfully  limited  in  its  distribution.  It  is  the  deer  of  California 
and  western  Oregon,  and  it  has  been  so  ruthlessly  slaughtered  that  to- 
day it  is  going  fast.  As  conditions  stand  to-day,  and  without  a  radical 
change  on  the  part  of  the  people  of  the  Pacific  coast,  this  very  inter- 
esting species  is  bound  to  disappear.  It  will  not  be  persistent,  like  the 
white-tailed  deer,  but  in  the  heavy  forests,  it  will  last  much  longer  than 
the  mule  deer. 

My  information  regarding  this  deer  is  like  the  stock  of  specimens  of 
it  in  museum  collections, — meager  and  unsatisfactory.  We  need  to  know 
in  detail  how  that  species  is  faring  to-day,  and  what  its  prospects  are  for 
the  immediate  future.  In  1900,  I  saw  great  piles  of  skins  from  it  in  the 
fur  houses  of  Seattle,  and  the  sight  gave  me  much  concern. 

The  Caribou,  Generally. — I  think  it  is  not  very  difficult  to 
forecast  the  future  of  the  Genus  Rangifer  in  North  America,  from  the 
logic  of  the  conditions  of  to-day.  Thanks  to  the  splendid  mass  of  in- 
formation that  has  been  accumulated  regarding  this  group,  we  are  able 
to  draw  certain  conclusions.  I  think  that  the  caribou  of  the  Canadian 
Barren  Grounds  and  northeastern  Alaska  will  survive  in  great  numbers 
for  at  least  another  century;  that  the  caribou  herds  of  Newfoundland 
will  last  nearly  as  long,  and  that  in  fifty  years  or  less  all  the  caribou  of 
the  great  northwestern  wilderness  will  be  swept  away. 


174  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

The  reasons  for  these  conclusions  are  by  no  means  obscure,  or  far- 
fetched. 

In  the  first  place,  the  barren-ground  caribou  are  to-day  enormously 
numerous, — undoubtedly  running  up  into  millions.  It  can  not  be  pos- 
sible that  they  are  being  killed  faster  than  they  are  breeding;  and  so 
they  must  be  increasing.  Their  food  supply  is  unlimited.  They  are  pro- 
tected by  two  redoubtable  champions, — Jack  Frost  and  the  Mosquito. 
Their  country  never  will  contain  a  great  human  population.  The  natives 
are  so  few  in  number,  and  so  lazy,  that  even  though  they  should  become 
supplied  with  modern  firearms,  it  is  unlikely  that  they  ever  will  make  a 
serious  impression  on  the  caribou  millions.  The  only  thing  to  fear  for  the 
barren-ground  caribou  throngs  is  disease, — a  factor  that  is  beyond  human 
prediction. 

It  is  reasonably  certain  that  the  Barren  Grounds  never  will  be  netted 
by  railways, — unless  gold  is  discovered  over  a  wide  area.  The  fierce  cold 
and  hunger,  and  the  billions  of  mosquitoes  of  the  Barren  Grounds  will 
protect  the  caribou  from  the  wholesale  slaughter  that  "civilized"  man 
joyously  would  inflict — if  he  had  the  chance. 

The  caribou  thousands  of  Newfoundland  are  fairly  accessible  to 
sportsmen  and  pot-hunters,  but  at  the  same  time  the  colonial  govern- 
ment can  protect  them  from  exterinination  if  it  will.  Already  much  has 
been  done  to  check  the.  reckless  and  wicked  slaughter  that  once  prevailed. 
A  bag  limit  of  three  bull  caribou  per  annum  has  been  fixed,  which  is 
enforced  as  to  non-residents  and  sportsmen,  but  in  a  way  that  is  much 
too  "American"  it  is  often  ignored  by  residents  in  touch  with  the  game. 
For  instance,  the  guide  of  a  New  York  gentleman  whom  I  know  admitted 
to  my  friend  that  each  year  he  killed  "about  25"  caribou  for  himself 
and  his  family  of  four  other  persons.  He  explained  thus:  "When  the 
inspector  comes  around,  I  show  him  two  caribou  hanging  in  my  wood- 
shed, but  back  in  the  woods  I  have  a  little  shack  where  I  keep  the  others 
until  I  want  them." 

The  real  sportsmen  of  the  world  never  will  make  the  slightest  per- 
ceptible impression  on  the  caribou  of  Newfoundland.  For  one  thing, 
the  hunting  is  much  too  tame  to  be  interesting.  If  the  caribou  of  that 
Island  ever  are  exterminated,  it  will  be  strictly  by  the  people  of  New- 
foundland, themselves.  If  the  government  will  tighten  its  grip  on  the 
herds,  they  need  never  be  exterminated. 

The  caribou  of  New  Brunswick,  Quebec  and  Ontario  are  few  and 
widely  scattered.  Unless  carefully  conserved,  they  are  not  likely  to  last 
long ;  for  their  country  is  annually  penetrated  in  every  direction  by  armed 
men,  white  and  red.  There  is  no  means  by  which  it  can  be  proven,  but 
from  the  number  of  armed  men  in  those  regions  I  feel  sure  that  the  typical 
woodland  caribou  species  is  being  shot  faster  than  it  is  breeding.  The 
sportsmen  and  naturalists  of  Canada  and  New  Brunswick  would  render 
good  service  by  making  a  close  and  careful  investigation  of  that  question. 

The  caribou  of  the  northwestern  wilderness  are  in  a  situation  peculiarly 
their  own.     They  inhabit  a  region  of  naked  mountains  and  thin  forests. 


THE   PRESENT  AND    FUTURE   OF  BIG   GAME  175 

wherein  they  are  conspicuous,  easily  stalked  and  easily  killed.  Nowhere 
do  they  exist  in  large  herds  of  thousands,  or  even  of  many  hundreds. 
They  live  in  small  bands  of  from  ten  to  twenty  head,  and  even  those  are 
far  apart.  The  region  in  which  they  live  is  certain  to  be  thoroughly 
opened  up  by  railways,  and  exploited.  Fifty  years  from  now  we  will 
find  every  portion  of  the  now-wild  Northwest  fairly  accessible  by  rail. 
The  building  of  the  railways  will  be  to  the  caribou — and  to  other  big  game 
— the  day  of  doom.  In  that  wild,  rough  region,  no  power  on  earth, — 
save  that  which  might  be  able  to  deprive  all  the  inhabitants  and  all 
visitors  of  firearms, — can  possibly  save  the  game  outside  of  a  few  pre- 
serves that  are  diligently  patroled. 

The  big  game  of  the  northwest  region,  in  which  I  include  the  interior 
of  Alaska,  will  go\  It  is  only  a  question  of  time.  Already  the  building 
of  the  city  of  Fairbanks,  and  the  exploitation  of  the  mining  districts 
surrounding  it,  have  led  to  such  harrassment  and  slaughter  of  the  migrat- 
ing caribou  that  the  great  herd  which  formerly  traversed  the  Tanana 
country  once  a  year  has  completely  changed  its  migration  route,  and 
now  keeps  much  farther  north.  The  "crossing"  of  the  Yukon  near 
Eagle  City  has  been  abandoned.  A  hundred  years  hence,  the  north- 
western wilderness  will  be  dotted  with  towns  and  criss-crossed  with  rail- 
ways; but  the  big  game  of  it  will  be  gone,  except  in  the  preserves  that  are 
yet  to  be  made.  This  will  particularly  involve  the  caribou,  moose,  and 
mountain  sheep  of  all  species,  which  will  be  the  first  to  go.  The  mountain 
goat  and  the  forest  bears  will  hold  out  longer  than  their  more  exposed 
neighbors  of  the  treeless  mountains. 

The  Moose. — In  the  United  States  the  moose  is  found  in  five  states, — 
Maine,  Minnesota,  Montana,  Wyoming  and  Idaho.  There  are  550  in 
the  Yellowstone  Park.  In  Maine  and  Minnesota  only  may  moose  be 
hunted  and  killed.  In  the  season  of  1909,  184  moose  were  killed  in  Maine, 
—a  large  number,  considering  the  small  moose  population  of  that  state. 
In  northern  Minnesota,  we  now  possess  a  great  national  moose  preserve 
of  909,743  acres;  and  in  1908  Mr.  Fullerton,  after  a  personal  inspection 
in  which  he  saw  189  moose  in  nine  days,  estimated  the  total  moose  popu- 
lation of  the  present  day  at  10,000  head.  This  is  a  moose  preserve  worth 
while. 

Outside  of  protected  areas,  the  moose  is  the  animal  that  is  most  easily 
exterminated.  Its  trail  is  easily  followed,  and  its  habits  are  thoroughly 
known,  down  to  three  decimal  places.  As  a  hunter's  reward  it  is  Great. 
Strange  to  say.  New  Brunswick  has  found  that  the  moose  is  an  animal 
that  it  is  possible,  and  even  easy,  to  protect.  The  death  of  a  moose  is  an 
event  that  is  not  easily  concealed !  Wherever  it  is  thoroughly  understood 
that  the  moose  law  will  be  enforced,  the  would-be  poacher  pauses  to 
consider  the  net  results  to  him  of  a  jail  sentence. 

In  New  Brunswick  we  have  seen  two  strange  things  happen,  during 
our  own  times.  We  have  seen  the  moose  migrate  into,  and  permanently 
occupy,  an  extensive  area  that  previously  was  destitute  of  that  species. 
At  the  same  time,  we  have  seen  a  reasonable  number  of  bull  moose  killed 


176  OVR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

by  sportsmen  without  disturbing  in  the  least  the  general  equanimity  of 
the  general  moose  population !  And  at  this  moment,  the  moose  popula- 
tion of  New  Brunswick  is  almost  incredible.  Every  moose  hunter  who 
goes  there  sees  from  20  to  40  moose,  and  two  of  my  friends  last  year  saw, 
"in  round  numbers,  about  100!"  Up  to  date  the  size  of  adult  antlers 
seem  to  be  maintaining  a  high  standard. 

In  summer,  the  photographing  of  moose  in  the  rivers,  lakes  and  ponds 
of  Maine  and  New  Brunswick  amounts  to  an  industry.  I  am  uneasy 
about  the  constant  picking  off  of  the  largest  and  best  breeding  bulls  of 
the  Mirimachi  country,  lest  it  finally  reduce  the  size  and  antlers  of  the 
moose  of  that  region;  but  only  the  future  can  tell  us  just  how  that  pros- 
pect stands  to-day. 

In  Alaska,  our  ever  thoughtful  and  forehanded  Biological  Survey  of 
the  Department  of  Agriculture  has  by  legal  proclamation  at  one  stroke 
converted  the  whole  of  the  Kenai  Peninsula  into  a  magnificent  moose 
preserve.  This  will  save  Alces  gigas,  the  giant  moose  of  Alaska,  from 
extermination;  and  New  Brunswick  and  the  Minnesota  preserve  will 
save  Alces  americanus.  But  in  the  northwest,  we  can  positively  depend 
upon  it  that  eventually,  wherever  the  moose  may  legally  be  hunted  and 
killed  by  any  Tom,  Dick  or  Harry  who  can  afford  a  twenty-dollar  rifle 
and  a  license,  the  moose  surely  will  disappear. 

The  moose  laws  of  Alaska  are  strict — toward  sportsmen,  only!  The 
miners,  "prospectors"  and  Indians  may  kill  as  many  as  they  please,  "for 
food  purposes. ' '  This  opens  the  door  to  a  great  amount  of  unfair  slaughter, 
Any  coffee-cooler  can  put  a  pan  and  pick  into  his  hunting  outfit,  go  out 
after  moose,  and  call  himself  a  "prospector." 

I  grant  that  the  real  prospector,  who  is  looking  for  ores  and  minerals 
with  an  intelligent  eye,  and  knows  what  he  is  doing,  should  have  special 
privileges  on  game,  to  keep  him  from  starving.  The  settled  miner,  how- 
ever, is  in  a  different  class.  No  miner  should  ask  the  privilege  of  living 
on  wild  game,  any  more  than  should  the  farmer,  the  steamboat  man,  the 
railway  laborer,  or  the  soldier  in  an  army  post.  The  Indian  should  have 
no  game  advantages  whatever  over  a  white  man.  He  does  not  own  the 
game  of  a  region,  any  more  than  he  owns  its  minerals  or  its  water-power. 
He  should  obey  the  general  game  laws,  just  the  same  as  white  men.  In 
Africa,  as  far  as  possible,  the  white  population  wisely  prohibits  the 
natives  from  owning  or  using  firearms,  and  a  good  idea  it  is,  too.  I  am 
glad  there  is  one  continent  on  which  the  "  I'm-just-as-good-as-you-are  " 
nightmare  does  not  curse  the  whole  land. 

The  Musk-ox. — Now  that  the  north  pole  has  been  safely  discovered, 
and  the  south  pole  has  become  the  storm-center  of  polar  exploration,  the 
harried  musk-ox  herds  of  the  farthest  north  are  having  a  rest.  I  think 
that  most  American  sportsmen  have  learned  that  as  a  sporting  proposi- 
tion there  is  about  as  much  fun  and  glory  in  harrying  a  musk-ox  herd 
with  dogs,  and  picking  off  the  members  of  it  at  "parade  rest,"  as  there  is 
in  shooting  range  cattle  in  a  round-up.  The  habits  of  the  animal  posi- 
tively eliminate  the  real  essence  of  sport, — difficulty  and  danger.    When 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  BIG  GAME  177 

a  musk-ox  band  is  chased  by  dogs,  or  by  wolves,  the  full-grown  members 
of  it,  bulls  and  cows  alike,  instantly  form  a  close  circle  around  the  calves, 
facing  outward  shoulder  to  shoulder,  and  stand  at  bay.  Without  the  aid 
of  a  gunner  and  a  rifle,  such  a  formation  is  invincible !  Mr.  Paul  Rainey's 
moving  pictures  tell  a  wonderful  story  of  animal  intelligence,  bravery 
and  devotion  to  the  parental  instinct. 

For  some  reason,  the  musk-ox  herds  do  not  seem  to  have  perceptibly 
increased  since  man  first  encountered  them.  The  number  alive  to-day 
appears  to  be  no  greater  than  it  was  fifty  years  ago;  and  this  leads  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  present  delicate  balance  could  easily  be  disturbed 
the  wrong  way.  Fortunately,  it  seems  reasonably  certain  that  the  In- 
dians of  the  Canadian  Barren  Grounds,  the  Eskimo  of  the  far  north,  and 
the  stray  explorers  all  live  outside  the  haunts  of  the  species,  and  come 
in  touch  only  with  the  edge  of  the  musk-ox  population  as  a  whole.  This 
leads  us  to  hope  and  believe  that,  through  the  difficulties  involved  in 
reaching  them,  the  main  bodies  of  musk-ox  of  both  species  are  safe  from 
extermination. 

At  the  same  time,  the  time  has  come  for  Canada,  the  United  States 
and  Denmark  to  join  in  formulating  a  stiff  law  for  the  prevention  of 
wholesale  slaughter  of  musk-ox  for  sport.  It  should  be  rendered  impos- 
sible for  another  sportsman  to  kill  twenty-three  head  in  one  day,  as  once 
occurred.  Give  the  sportsman  a  bag  of  three  bulls,  and  no  more.  To 
this,  no  true  sportsman  will  object,  and  the  objections  of  game-hogs 
only  serve  to  confirm  the  justice  of  the  thing  they  oppose. 

The  Grizzly  Bear. — To  many  persons  it  may  seem  strange  that  any- 
one should  feel  disposed  to  accord  protection  to  such  fierce  predatory 
animals  as  grizzly  bears,  lions  and  tigers.  But  the  spirit  of  fair  play 
springs  eternal  in  some  human  breasts.  The  sportsmen  of  the  world 
do  not  stick  at  using  long-range,  high-power  repeating  rifles  on  big  game, 
but  they  draw  the  line  this  side  of  traps,  poisons  and  extermination. 
The  sportsmen  of  India  once  thought, — for  about  a  year  and  a  day, — 
that  it  was  permissible  to  kill  troublesome  and  expensive  tigers  by  poison. 
Mr.  G.  P.  Sanderson  tried  it,  and  when  his  strychnine  operations 
promptly  developed  three  bloated  and  disgusting  tiger  carcasses,  even 
his  native  followers  revolted  at  the  principle.  That  was  the  alpha  and 
omega  of  Sanderson's  poisoning  activities. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  if  the  extermination  of  the  tiger  from  the  whole 
of  India  were  possible,  and  the  to-be  or  not-to-be  were  put  to  a  vote  of 
the  sportsmen  of  India,  the  answer  would  be  a  thundering  "No!"  Says 
Major  J.  Stevenson-Hamilton  in  his  "Animal  Life  in  Africa :"  "It  is  impos- 
sible to  contemplate  the  use  against  the  lion  of  any  other  weapon  than 
the  rifle." 

The  real  sportsmen  and  naturalists  of  America  are  decidedly  opposed 
to  the  extermination  of  the  grizzly  bear.  They  feel  that  the  wilds  of 
North  America  are  wide  enough  for  the  accommodation  of  man}^  grizzlies, 
without  crowding  the  proletariat.  A  Rocky  Mountain  without  a  grizzly 
upon  it,  or  at  least  a  bear  of  some  kind,  is  only  half  a  mountain, — com- 


178  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

monplace  and  tame.  Put  one  two-year-old  grizzly  cub  upon  it,  and  presto ! 
every  cubic  yard  of  its  local  atmosphere  reeks  with  romantic  uncertainty 
and  fearsome  thrills. 

A  few  persons  have  done  considerable  talking  and  writing  about  the 
damage  to  stock  inflicted  by  bears,  but  I  think  there  is  little  justification 
for  such  charges.  Certainly,  there  is  not  one-tenth  enough  real  damage 
done  by  bears  to  justify  their  extermination.  At  the  present  time,  we 
hear  that  the  farmers  ( !)  of  Kadiak  Island,  Alaska,  are  being  seriously 
harassed  and  damaged  by  the  big  Kadiak  bear, — an  animal  so  rare  and 
shy  that  it  is  very  difficult  for  a  sportsman  to  kill  one !  I  think  the  charges 
against  the  bears, — if  the  Kadiak  Islanders  ever  really  have  made  any, — 
need  to  be  proven,  by  the  production  of  real  evidence. 

In  the  United  States,  outside  of  our  game  preserves,  I  know  of  not 
one  locality  in  which  grizzly  bears  are  sufficiently  numerous  to  justify  a 
sportsman  in  going  out  to  hunt  them.  The  California  grizzly,  once 
represented  by  "Monarch  "  in  Golden  Gate  Park,  is  almost,  if  not  wholly, 
extinct.  In  Montana,  outside  of  Glacier  Park  it  is  useless  to  apply  for 
wild  grizzlies.  In  the  Bitter  Root  Mountains  and  Clearwater  Mountains 
of  Idaho,  there  are  grizzlies,  but  they  hide  so  effectually  under  the  snow- 
bent  willows  on  the  "slides"  that  it  is  almost  imposssible  to  get  a  shot. 
Northwestern  Wyoming  still  contains  a  few  grizzlies,  but  there  are  so 
many  square  miles  of  mountains  around  each  animal  it  is  now  almost 
useless  to  go  hunting  for  them.  British  Columbia,  western  Alberta  and 
the  coast  mountains  at  least  as  far  as  Skaguay,  and  Yukon  Territory 
generally,  all  contain  grizzlies,  and  the  sportsman  who  goes  out  for  sheep, 
caribou  and  moose  is  reasonably  certain  to  see  half  a  dozen  bears  and  kill 
at  least  one  or  two.  In  those  countries,  the  grizzly  species  will  hold 
forth  long  after  all  killable  grizzlies  have  vanished  from  the  United  States 

I  think  that  it  is  now  time  for  California,  Montana,  Washington, 
Oregon,  Idaho  and  Wyoming  to  give  grizzly  bears  protection  of  some 
sort.  Possibly  the  situation  in  those  states  calls  for  a  five-year  close 
season.  Even  British  Columbia  should  now  place  a  bag  limit  on  this 
species.  This  has  seemed  clear  to  me  ever  since  two  of  my  friends  killed 
(in  the  spring  of  1912)  six  grizzlies  in  one  week!  But  Provincial  Game 
Warden  A.  Bryan  Williams  says  that  at  present  it  would  be  impossible 
to  impose  a  bag  limit  of  one  per  year  on  the  grizzlies  of  British  Columbia ; 
and  Mr.  Williams  is  a  sincere  game-protector. 

The  Brown  Bears  of  Alaska. — These  magnificent  monsters  present 
a  perplexing  problem,  which  I  am  inclined  to  believe  can  be  satisfactorily 
solved  by  the  Biological  Survey  only  in  short  periods,  say  of  three  or 
four  years  each.  Naturally,  the  skin  hunters  of  Alaska  ardently  desire 
the  skins  of  those  bears,  for  the  money  they  represent.  That  side  of 
the  bear  problem  does  not  in  the  least  appeal  to  the  ninety  odd  millions 
of  people  who  live  this  side  of  Alaska.  The  skins  of  the  Alaskan  brown 
bears  have  little  value  save  as  curiosities,  nailed  upon  the  wall,  where 
they  can  not  be  stepped  upon  and  injured.  The  hunting  of  those  bears, 
however,  is  a  business  for  men;    and  it  is  partly  for  that  reason  they 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  BIG  GAME 


179 


^  Jwn 


;  rw^jrwiRv  «.""*» 


THE  WICHITA    NATIONAL  BISON    HERD 
Presented  by  the  New  York  Zoological  Society 

should  be  preserved.  A  bear-hunt  on  the  Alaska  Peninsula,  Admiralty 
or  Montagu  Islands,  is  an  event  of  a  lifetime,  and  with  a  bag  limit  of  one 
brown  bear,  the  species  would  be  quite  safe  from  extermination. 

In  Alaska  there  is  some  dissatisfaction  over  the  protection  accorded 
the  big  brown  bears ;  but  those  rules  are  right  as  Jar  as  they  go!  A  gov- 
ernor of  Alaska  once  said  to  me :  ' '  The  preservation  of  the  game  of  Alaska 
should  be  left  to  the  people  of  Alaska.  It  is  their  game;  and  they  will 
preserve  it  all  right!" 

The  answer?    Not  by  a  long  shot! 

Only  three  things  were  wrong  with  the  ex-governor's  view: 

1. — The  game  of  Alaska  does  not  belong  to  the  people  who  live  in 
Alaska — with  the  intent  to  get  out  to-morrow!  It  belongs  to  the  93,000,- 
000  people  of  the  Nation. 

2. — The  preservation  of  the  Alaskan  fauna  on  the  public  domain 
should  not  be  left  unreservedly  to  the  people  of  Alaska,  because 

3. — As  sure  as  shooting,  they  will  not  preserve  it ! 

Congress  is  right  in  appropriating  $15,000  for  game  protection  in 
Alaska.  It  is  very  necessary  that  the  regulations  for  conserving  the  wild 
life  should  be  fixed  by  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture,  with  the  advice  of 
the  Biological  Survey. 

The  Black  Bear  is  an  interesting  citizen.  He  harms  nobody  nor 
anything;  he  affords  good  sport;  he  objects  to  being  exterminated,  and 
wherever  in  North  America  he  is  threatened  with  extermination,  he 


180  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

should  at  once  be  given  protection !  A  black  bear  in  the  wilds  is  harmless. 
In  captivity,  posed  as  a  household  "pet,"  he  is  decidedly  dangerous,  and 
had  best  be  given  the  middle  of  the  road.  In  big  forests  he  is  a  grand 
stayer,  and  will  not  be  exterminated  from  the  fauna  of  the  United  States 
until  Washington  is  wrecked  by  anarchists. 

The  American  Bison. — I  regard  the  American  bison  species  as  now 
reasonably  secure  against  extermination.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it 
breeds  persistently  and  successfully  in  captivity,  and  to  the  great  efforts 
that  have  been  put  forth  by  the  United  States  Government,  the  Canadian 
Government,  the  American  Bison  Society,  the  New  York  Zoological  So- 
ciety, and  several  private  individuals. 

The  species  reached  its  lowest  ebb  in  1889,  when  there  were  only  256 
head  in  captivity  and  835  running  wild.    The  increase  has  been  as  follows : 

1888— W.  T.  Hornaday's  census 1,300 

1902— S.  P.  Langley's  census 1,394 

1905— Frank  Baker's  census 1,697 

1908— W.  T.  Hornadav's  census 2,047 

1910— W.  P.  Wharton's  census  (in  North  Amevica) 2,108 

1912— W.  P.  Wharton's  census  (in  North  America) 2,907 

To-day,  nearly  one-half  of  the  living  bison  are  in  very  large  govern- 
mental parks,  perpetually  established  and  breeding  rapidly,  as  follows : 

In  the  United  States. 

Yellowstone  ParK  fenced  herd,  founded  by  Congress 125 

Montana  National  Bison  Range,  founded  by  The  American  Bison  Society 69 

Wichita  Bison  Range,  founded  by  The  New  Yo-k  Zoological  Society 39 

Wind  Cave  Bison  Range,  S.  Dakota,  founded  by  Am.  Bison  Society ....  To  be  stocked 
Niobrara  (Neb.)  National  Bison  Range,  now  in  process  of  creation To  be  stocked 

In  Canada. 

Buffalo  Park,  Wainwright,  Alberta 1,052 

Elk  Island  Park,  Alberta 53 

Rocky  Mountains  Park,  Banflf,  Alberta 27 

Total  National  and  Provincial  Preserves 1,365 

Of  wild  bison  there  are  only  three  groups:  49  head  in  the  Yellowstone 
National  Park,  about  75  Pablo  "outlaws"  around  the  Montana  Bison 
Range,  and  between  300  and  400  head  in  northern  Athabasca,  south- 
west of  Fort  Resolution,  existing  in  small  and  widely  scattered  bands. 

The  efforts  of  man  to  atone  for  the  great  bison  slaughter  by  preserv- 
ing the  species  from  extinction  have  been  crowned  with  success.  Two 
governments  and  two  thousand  individuals  have  shared  this  task, — 
solely  for  sentimental  reasons.  In  these  facts  we  find  reason  to  hope 
and  believe  that  other  efforts  now  being  made  to  save  other  species  from 
annihilation  will  be  equally  successful. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  OF  AFRICAN  GAME 

Thanks  to  the  diHgence  with  which  sportsmen  and  field  naturaHsts 
have  recorded  their  observations  in  the  haunts  of  big  game,  it  is  not  at 
all  difficult  to  forecast  the  immediate  future  of  the  big  game  of  the  world. 
We  may  safely  assume  that  all  lands  well  suited  to  agriculture,  mining 
and  grazing  will  become  populated  by  rifle-bearing  men,  with  the  usual 
result  to  the  wild  mammals  and  birds.  At  the  same  time,  the  game  of 
the  open  mountains  everywhere  is  thinly  distributed  and  easily  exter- 
minated. On  the  other  hand,  the  unconquerable  forest  jungles  of  certain 
portions  of  the  tropics  will  hold  their  own,  and  shelter  their  four-footed 
inhabitants  for  centuries  to  come. 

On  the  open  mountains  of  the  world  and  on  the  grazing  lands  most  big 
game  is  now  being  killed  much  faster  than  it  breeds.  This  is  due  to  the 
attacks  of  five  times  too  many  hunters,  open  seasons  that  are  too  long, 
and  bag  limits  that  are  far  too  liberal.  As  an  example,  consider  Africa 
Viewed  in  any  way  it  may  be  taken,  the  bag  limit  in  British  East  Africa 
is  appallingly  high.  Notice  this  astounding  array  of  wild  creatures  that 
each  hunter  may  kill  under  a  license  costing  only  $2§o! 


2  Buffalo 
2  Rhinoceros 
2  Hippopotamus 

1  Eland 

2  Grevy  Zebra 
20  Common  Zebra 

2  Fringe-eared  Oryx 
4  Beisa  Antelope 
4  Waterbuck 
1  Sable  Antelope 
1  Roan  Antelope 

1  Greater  Kudu 
4  Lesser  Kudu 

10  Topi 

20  Coke  Hartebeest 

2  Neumann  HarteVjeest 
4  Jackson  Hartebeest 

6  Hunter's  Antelope 
4  Thomas  Kob 
2  Bongo 
4  Pallah 
2  Sitatunga 


3  Gnu 

12  Grant  Gazelle 

4  Waller's  Gazelle 
10  Harvey's  Duiker 
10  Isaac's  Duiker 
10  Blue  Duiker 

10  Kirk's  Dik-dik 

10  Guenthcr's  Dik-dik 

10  Hinde's  Dik-dik 

10  Cavendish  Dik-dik 

10  Abyssinian  Oribi 

10  Haggard's  Oribi 

10  Kenya  Oribi 

10  vSuni 

10  Klipspringer 

10  Ward's  Reedl)uck 

10  Chanler's  Reedbuck 

10  Thompson  Gazelle 

10  Peters  Gazelle 

10  Soemmerring  Gazelle 

10  Bushbuck 

10  Haywood  Bushbuck 


The  grand  total  is  a  possible  300  large  hoofed  and  horned  animals 
representing  44  species!     Add  to  this  all  the  lions,  leopards,  cheetahs, 


182  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

cape  hunting  dogs  and  hyaenas  that  the  hunter  can  kill,  and  it  will  be 
enough  to  stock  a  zoological  garden! 

Quite  a  number  of  these  species,  like  the  sable  antelope,  kudu.  Hunter's 
antelope,  bongo  and  sitatunga  are  already  rare,  and  therefore  they  are 
all  the  more  eagerly  sought. 

Into  the  fine  grass-lands  of  British  East  Africa,  suitable  for  crops  and 
stock  grazing,  settlers  are  steadily  going.  Each  one  is  armed,  and  at 
once  becomes  a  killer  of  big  game.  And  all  the  time  the  visiting  sports- 
men are  increasing  in  number,  going  farther  from  the  Uganda  Railway, 
and  persistently  seeking  out  the  rarest  and  finest  of  the  game.  The 
buffalo  has  recovered  from  the  slaughter  by  rinderpest  only  in  time  to 
meet  the  onset  of  oversea  sportsmen. 

Mr.  Arthur  Jordan  has  seen  much  of  the  big  game  of  British  East 
Africa,  and  its  killing.  Him  I  asked  to  tell  me  how  long,  in  his  opinion, 
the  big  game  of  that  territory  will  last  outside  of  the  game  preserves, 
as  it  is  now  being  killed.  He  said,  "Oh,  it  will  last  a  long  time.  I  think 
it  will  last  fifteen  years!" 

Fifteen  years!  And  this  for  the  richest  big-game  fauna  of  any  one 
spot  in  the  whole  world,  which  Nature  has  been  several  million  years  in 
developing  and  placing  there! 

At  present  the  marvelous  herds  of  big  game  of  British  East  Africa 
and  Uganda  constitute  the  grandest  zoological  spectacle  that  the  world 
ever  has  seen  in  historic  times.  For  such  an  area,  the  number  of  species 
is  incredible,  and  until  they  are  seen,  the  thronging  masses  of  individuals 
are  beyond  conception.  It  is  easy  to  say  "a  herd  of  3,000  zebras; "  but 
no  mere  words  can  give  an  adequate  impression  of  the  actual  army  of 
stripes  and  bars,  and  hoofs  thundering  in  review  over  a  grassy  plain. 

But  the  settlers  say,  "The  zebras  must  go !  They  break  through  our 
best  wire  fences,  ruin  our  crops,  despoil  us  of  the  fruits  of  long  and  toilsome 
efforts,  and  much  expenditure.  We  simply  can  not  live  in  a  country 
inhabited  by  herds  of  wild  zebras."  And  really,  their  contention  is  well 
founded.  When  it  is  necessary  to  choose  between  wild  animals  and 
peaceful  agriculture  for  millions  of  men,  the  animals  must  give  way. 

In  those  portions  of  the  great  East  African  plateau  region  that  are 
suited  to  modern  agriculture,  stretching  from  Buluwayo  to  northern 
Uganda,  the  wild  herds  are  doomed  to  be  crowded  out  by  the  farmer  and 
the  fruit-grower.  This  is  the  inevitable  result  of  civilization  and  progress 
in  wild  lands.  Marauding  battalions  of  zebras,  bellicose  rhinoceroses 
and  murderous  buffaloes  do  not  fit  in  with  ranches  and  crops,  and  chil- 
dren going  to  school.  Except  in  the  great  game  preserves,  the  swamps 
and  the  dense  jungles  it  is  certain  that  the  big  game  of  the  whole  of  east- 
ern Africa  is  foredoomed  to  disappear, — the  largest  and  most  valu- 
able species  first. 

Five  hundred  years  from  now,  when  North  America  is  worn  out,  and 
wasted  to  a  skeleton  of  what  it  now  is,  the  great  plateau  region  of  East 
Africa  between  Cape  Town  and  Lake  Rudolph  will  be  a  mighty  empire. 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  AFRICAN  GAME 


183 


DISTRIBUTION  AND  PREVALENCE 
OF  THE  LION    IN   AFRICA 


Exterminated  in  the  last  Century 
I  Rare 
\  Frequent 

Moit  Numerous 


MAP  SHOWING  THE  DISAPPEARANCE  OF  THE  LION 

Incidentally,  it  is  also  an  Index  of  the  Disappearance  of  African  Big  Game  Generally. 
From  an  Article  in  the  Review  of  Reviews,  for  August.  1912,  by  Cyrus  C.  Adams,  and 
Based  Largely  upon  the  E.xhaustive  Studies  of  Dr.  C.  M.  Engel,  of  Copenhagen. 


teeming  with  white  population.  Giraffes  and  rhinoceroses  now  are 
trampling  over  the  sites  of  the  cities  and  universities  of  the  future.  Then 
the  herds  of  grand  game  that  now  make  Africa  a  sportsman's  wonderland 
will  exist  only  in  closed  territory,  in  books,  and  in  memory. 

From  what  has  befallen  in  South  Africa,  we  can  easily  and  correctly 
forecast  the  future  of  the  big  game  of  British  East  Africa  and  Uganda. 
Less  than  fifty  years  ago.  Cape  Colony,  Natal,  Zululand,  and  every 


184  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

country  up  to  the  Zambesi  was  i;eeming  with  herds  of  big  wild  animals, 
just  as  the  northern  provinces  now  are.  As  late  as  1890,  when  Rhodesia 
was  taken  over  by  the  Chartered  Company,  and  the  capital  city  of  Salis- 
bury was  staked  out,  an  American  boy  in  the  Pioneer  Corps,  now  Honor- 
able William  Harvey  Brown,  of  Salisbury,  wrote  thus  of  the  Gwibi  Flats, 
near  Salisbury: 

"That  evening  I  beheld  on  those  fiats  a  sight  which  probably  will 
never  again  be  seen  there  to  the  end  of  the  world.  The  variety  deploying 
before  me  was  almost  incredible!  There,  within  the  range  of  my  vision 
were  groups  of  roan,  sable  and  tsessebi  antelopes,  Burchell  zebras,  [now 
totally  extinct !]  elands,  reedbucks,  steinbucks  and  ostriches.  It  was  like 
Africa  in  the  days  of  Livingstone.  As  I  sat  on  my  horse,  viewing  with 
ainazement  this  wonderful  panorama  of  wild  life,  I  was  startled  by  a  herd 
that  came  galloping  around  a  small  hill  just  behind  me." — ^"On  the 
South  African  Frontier,"  p.  114.) 

That  was  in  1890.    And  how  is  it  to-day? 

Salisbury  is  a  modern  city,  endorsed  by  two  lines  of  railway.  The 
Gwibi  Flats  are  farms.  There  is  some  big  game  yet,  in  Rhodesia  south 
of  the  Zambesi,  but  to  find  it  you  must  go  at  least  a  week's  journey  froin 
the  capital,  to  the  remote  corners  that  have  not  yet  been  converted  into 
farms  or  mining  settlements.  North  of  the  Zambesi,  Rhodesia  yet 
contains  plenty  of  big  game.  The  Victoria  Falls  station  is  a  popular 
starting  point  for  hunting  expeditions  headed  northeast  and  northwest. 
In  the  northwest  the  game  is  yet  quite  in  a  state  of  nature.  Unfortunately 
the  Barotse  natives  of  that  region  can  procure  from  the  Portuguese 
traders  all  the  firearms  and  ammunition  that  they  can  pay  for,  and  by 
treaty  they  retain  their  hunting  rights.  The  final  result  will  be — exter- 
mination of  the  game. 

Elsewhere  throughout  Rhodesia  the  natives  are  not  permitted  to 
have  guns  and  gunpowder, — a  very  wise  regulation.  In  Alaska  our 
Indians  are  privileged  to  kill  game  all  the  year  round,  and  they  have 
modern  firearms  with  which  to  do  it. 

And  how  is  it  with  the  game  of  that  day  ? 

The  true  Burchell 's  zebra  is  now  regarded  as  extinct!  In  Cape  Colony 
and  Natal,  that  once  teemed  with  big  game  in  the  old-fashioned  African 
way,  they  are  counting  the  individual  wild  animals  that  remain!  Also, 
they  are  making  game  preserves,  literally  everywhere. 

Now  that  the  best  remaining  game  districts  of  Africa  are  rapidly 
coming  under  British  control,  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  observe  that  the 
governing  bodies  and  executive  officers  are  alive  to  the  necessity  of 
preserving  the  big  game  from  actual  extinction.  Excepting  German 
East  Africa,  from  Uganda  to  Cape  Colony  the  game  preserves  form  an 
almost  continuous  chain.  It  is  quite  impossible  to  enumerate  all  of  them; 
but  the  two  in  British  East  Africa  are  of  enormous  size,  and  are  well 
stocked  with  game.  South  Africa  contains  a  great  many  smaller  preserves 
and  a  few  specimen  herds  of  big  game,  but  that  is  about  all.  Except  in 
a  few  localities  the  hunting  of  big  game  in  that  region  is  done  forever. 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  AFRICAN  GAME  185 

The  Western  Districts  Game  and  Trout  Protective  Association  of 
South  Africa  recently,  (1911),  has  made  careful  counts  and  estimates  of 
the  number  of  individual  game  animals  remaining  in  Cape  Colony,  with 
the  following  result : 

Big  Game  in  the  Cape  Province 

From  information  kindly  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Association  by 
the  Government,  it  was  found  that  the  following  varieties  of  big  game  are 
still  found  in  the  Province.     The  numbers,  however,  are  only  approximate : 

Blesbok:  About  400  in  Steynsburg,  and  35  in  Queen's  Town  divisions. 

Bontebok:  About  30  in  Bredasdorp  and  45  in  Swellendam  divisions. 

Buffalo:  About  340  in  Uitenhage,  120  in  Alexandria,  and  75  in  Bathurst  divisions. 

Elephants:  About  130  in  Alexandria,  160  in  Uitenhage,  40  in  Bathurst,  and  20  in 
Knysna  divisions. 

Gemsbok:  About  2,450  in  Namaqualand,  4,500  in  Vryburg,  4,000  in  Gordonia,  and 
670  in  the  Kenhardt,  Mafeking  and  Barkly  West  divisions. 

Koodoo:  About  10,000,  found  chiefly  in  the  divisions  of  Albany,  Barkly  West,  Fort 
Beaufort,  Hay,  Herbert,  Jansenville,  Kuruman,  Ladismith,  Mafeking,  Mossel  Bay, 
Oudtshoorn,  Riversdale,  Steytlerville,  Uitenhage,  Victoria  East  and  Vryburg. 

Oribi:  About  120,  in  the  divisions  of  Albany  and  Alexandria. 

Rietbok:  About  170,  in  the  Komgha  division. 

Zebra:  About  560,  most  of  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  divisions  of  Cradock,  George 
and  Oudtshoorn.    A  few  are  to  be  found  in  the  divisions  of  Uniondale  and  Uitenhage. 

Springbok:  Being  migratory,  it  is  difficult  to  estimate  their  number.  In  some  years 
they  are  compelled  by  drought  to  invade  the  Province  in  large  numbers.  They  are 
then  seen  as  far  south  as  Calvinia  and  Fraserburg.  Large  numbers  are,  however, 
fenced  in  on  private  estates  in  various  parts  of  the  Province. 

KUpspringers:  About  11,200,  in  the  following  divisions,  viz.:  Namaqualand,  6,5.59; 
Kuruman,  2,100;  Steytlerville,  1,. 530;  Oudtshoorn,  275;  Hay,  250;  Ladismith,  220; 
Graaff-Reinet,  119;  Kenhardt,  66;  and  Cradock,  56. 

Hartebeest:  About  9,700,  principally  in  the  divisions  of  Vryburg,  Gordonia,  Kuruman, 
Mafeking,  Kimberley,  Hay  and  Beaufort  West. 

Wildebeest:  About  3,450  in  Vryburg,  80  each  in  Gordonia  and  Kuruman,  65  in  Mafe- 
king, 20  in  Queen's  Town,  and  a  few  in  the  Bredasdorp  divisions. 

Eland:  About  12  in  the  Graaff-Reinet  division,  privately  bred. 

The  above  showing  of  the  pitifully  small  numbers  of  the  specimens 
that  constitute  the  remnant  of  the  big-game  of  the  Cape  suggest  just 
one  thing: — a  universal  close  season  throughout  Cape  Colony,  and  no 
hunting  whatever  for  ten  years.    And  yet,  what  do  we  see? 

The  Report  from  which  the  above  census  was  taken  contains  half  a 
column  of  soHd  matter,  in  small  type,  giving  a  list  of  the  open  seasons 
all  over  Cape  Colony,  during  which  kilHng  may  be  done !  So  it  seems  that 
the  spirit  of  slaughter  is  the  same  in  Africa  that  it  is  in  America, — kill, 
as  long  as  there  is  anything  alive  to  kill ! 

This  list  is  of  startling  interest,  because  it  shows  how  closely  the 
small  remnants  of  big  game  are  now  marked  down  in  South  Africa. 

In  view  of  the  success  with  which  Englishmen  protect  their  game 
when  once  they  have  made  up  their  minds  to  do  so,  it  is  fair  to  expect 


186  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

that  the  herds  now  under  protection,  as  listed  above,  will  save  their 
respective  species  from  extinction.  It  is  alarming,  however,  to  note  the 
wide  territory  covered  by  the  deadly  "open  seasons,"  and  to  wonder 
when  the  bars  really  will  be  put  up. 

To-day,  Mashonaland  is  a  very-much-settled  colony.  The  Cape  to 
Cairo  railway  and  trains  de  luxe  long  ago  attained  the  Falls  of  the  Zam- 
besi, and  now  the  Curator  of  the  Salisbury  Museum  will  have  to  search 
diligently  in  far  off  Nyassaland,  and  beyond  the  Zambesi  River,  to  find 
enough  specimens  to  fill  his  cases  with  representatives  of  the  vanished 
Rhodesian  fauna.  Once  (1892)  the  white  rhinoceros  was  found  in 
northern  Rhodesia;  but  never  again.  In  Salisbury,  elands  and  zebras 
are  nearly  as  great  a  curiosity  as  they  are  in  St.  Louis. 

But  for  the  discovery  of  white  rhinoceroses  in  the  Lado  district,  on 
the  western  bank  of  the  Nile  below  Gondokoro,  we  would  now  be  saying 
that  Rhinoceros  simus  is  within  about  ten  specimens  of  total  extinction. 

From  South  Africa,  as  far  up  as  Salisbury,  in  central  Rhodesia,  at 
least  99  per  cent  of  the  big  game  has  disappeared  before  the  white  man's 
rifle.  Let  him  who  doubts  this  scan  the  census  of  wild  animals  still  living 
in  Cape  Colony. 

From  all  the  other  regions  of  Africa  that  are  easily  accessible  to  gun- 
ners, the  animal  life  is  vigorously  being  shot  out,  and  no  man  in  his  senses 
will  now  say  that  the  big  game  is  breeding  faster  than  it  is  being  killed. 
The  reverse  is  painfully  true.  Mr.  Carl  Akeley,  in  his  quest  for  a  really 
large  male  elephant  for  the  American  Museum  found  and  looked  over 
a  thousand  males  without  finding  one  that  was  really  fine  and  typical. 
All  the  photographs  of  elephant  herds  that  were  taken  by  Kermit  Roose- 
velt and  Akeley  show  a  striking  absence  of  adult,  males  and  of  females 
with  long  tusks.  There  are  only  young  males,  and  young  females  with 
small,  short  tusks.  The  answer  is — the  white  ivory  hunters  have  killed 
nearly  all  the  elephants  bearing  good  ivory. 

The  slaughter  of  big  game  is  going  on  furiously  in  British  East  Africa, 
because  the  Uganda  Railway  opens  up  the  entire  territory  to  hunters. 
Anyone,  man  or  woman,  who  can  raise  $5,000  in  cash  can  go  there  and 
make  a  huge  "bag"  of  big  game.  With  a  license  costing  only  $250  he 
can  kill  enough  big  game  to  sink  a  ship. 

The  bag  limit  in  British  East  Africa  is  ruinously  extravagant.  If  the 
government  desires  the  extermination  of  the  game,  such  a  bag  limit 
surely  will  promote  that  end.  It  is  awful  to  think  that  for  a  petty  sum 
any  man  may  buy  the  right  to  kill  ^oo  head  of  hoofed  and  horned  animals, 
of  44  species,  not  counting  the  carnivorous  animals  that  also  may  be 
killed.    That  bag  limit  should  immediately  be  reduced  y^  per  cent! 

As  matters  stand  to-day  in  British  East  Africa,  the  big  game  of  the 
country,  outside  the  three  preserves,  is  absolutely  certain  to  disappear, 
in  about  one-fourth  of  the  time  that  it  took  South  Africa  to  accomplish 
the  same  result.  The  reasons  are  obvious: — superior  accessibility,  more 
deadly  rifles,  expert  professional  guides,  and  a  widespread  craze  for 
killing  big  game.     With  care  and  economy,  British  East  Africa  should 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  AFRICAN  GAME  187 

furnish  good  hunting  for  two  centuries,  but  as  things  are  going  on  to- 
day, twenty  years  will  see  a  tremendous  change  for  the  worse,  and  a 
disappearance  of  game  that  will  literally  astonish  the  natives. 

German  East  Africa  and  Uganda  will  not  exterminate  their  quotas 
of  big  game  quite  so  soon.  The  absence  of  railways  is  a  great  factor  in 
game-existence.  The  Congo  Free  State  contains  game  and  sporting 
possibilities — on  the  unexplored  uplands  between  the  rivers, — that  are  as 
yet  totally  unknown  to  sportsmen  at  large.  We  are  accustomed  to  think- 
ing of  the  whole  basin  of  the  Congo  as  a  vast,  gloomy  and  impenetrable 
forest. 

There  is  to-day  in  Africa  a  vast  reserve  supply  of  grand  game.  It 
inhabits  regions  that  are  either  unknown,  or  most  difficult  to  penetrate. 
As  a  species  in  point,  consider  the  okapi.  Only  the  boldest  and  most 
persistent  explorers  ever  have  set  foot  in  its  tangled  and  miasmatic 
haunts.  It  may  be  twenty  years  before  a  living  specimen  can  be  brought 
out.  The  gorilla  and  the  chimpanzee  are  so  well  protected  by  the  density 
of  their  jungles  that  they  never  can  be  exterminated — until  the  natives 
are  permitted  to  have  all  the  firearms  that  they  desire !  When  that  day 
arrives,  it  is  "good-night"  to  all  the  wild  life  that  is  large  enough  to  eat 
or  to  wear. 

The  quagga  and  the  blaubok  became  extinct  before  the  world  learned 
that  their  existence  was  threatened !  The  giant  eland,  the  sable  antelope, 
the  greater  kudu,  the  bontebok,  blessbok,  the  mountain  and  Burchell 
zebras,  all  the  giraffes  save  that  of  Nigeria,  the  big  waterbucks,  the  nyala, 
the  sitatunga,  the  bongo,  and  the  gerenuk — all  will  go  in  the  same  way, 
everywhere  outside  the  game  preserves.  The  buffalo,  zebra  and  rhi- 
noceros are  especially  marked  for  destruction,  as  annoyances  to  colonists. 
You  who  read  of  the  killing  of  these  species  to-day  will  read  of  their  total 
disappearance  to-morrow.  So  long  as  the  hunting  of  them  is  permitted, 
their  ultimate  disappearance  is  fixed  and  certain.  It  is  not  the  way  of 
rifle-shooting  English  colonists  to  permit  herds  of  big  game  to  run  about 
merely  to  be  looked  at. 

Naturally,  the  open  plains  of  Africa,  and  the  thin  forests  of  the 
plateau  regions,  will  be  the  first  to  lose  their  big  game.  In  the  gloomy 
fastnesses  of  the  great  equatorial  forests,  and  other  really  dense  forests 
wherever  found,  the  elephants,  the  Derby  eland,  the  bongo,  the  okapi, 
the  buffaloes  (of  three  species),  the  bush-pigs,  the  bushbucks  and  the 
forest-loving  antelopes  generally  will  live,  for  possibly  one  hundred  j^ears, 
— or  until  the  natives  secure  plenty  of  modern  firearms  and  ammunition. 
Whenever  and  wherever  savages  become  supplied  with  rifles,  then  it  is 
time  to  measure  each  big-game  animal  for  its  coffin. 

The  elephants  of  the  great  equatorial  forest  westward  of  the  lake 
region  will  survive  long  after  the  last  eastern  elephant  has  bitten  the  dust. 
The  pygmy  elephant  of  the  lower  Congo  region  (Elephas  pumilio)  will 
be  the  last  African  elephant  species  to  disappear — because  it  inhabits 
dense  miasmatic  jungles,  its  tusks  are  of  the  smallest  size,  and  it  has  the 
least  commercial  value. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  OF  THE  GAME  OF  ASIA 

After  a  successful  survival  of  man's  influence  through  two  thousand 
years,  at  last  the  big  game  of  India  has  made  a  good  start  on  the  road  to 
vanishment.  Up  to  1870  it  had  held  its  own  with  a  tenacity  that  was 
astonishing.  In  1877,  I  found  the  Ganges — Jumna  dooab,  the  Animallai 
Hills,  the  Wynaad  Forest  and  Ceylon  literally  teeming  with  herds  of 
game.  The  Animallais  in  particular  were  a  hunter's  paradise.  In  each 
day  of  hunting,  large  game  of  some  kind  was  a  certainty.  The  Nilgiri  Hills 
had  been  quite  well  shot  out,  but  in  view  of  the  very  small  area  and  open, 
golf-links  character  of  the  whole  top  of  that  wonderful  sky  plateau,  that 
was  no  cause  for  wonderment. 

In  those  days  no  native  shikaree  owned  and  operated  a  gun, — or  at 
the  most  very,  very  few  of  them  did.  If  a  rogue  elephant,  a  man-eating 
tiger  or  a  nasty  leopard  became  a  public  nuisance,  it  was  a  case  for  a 
sahib  to  come  and  doctor  it  with  a  .577  double-barreled  express  rifle, 
worth  $150  or  more;    and  the  sahibs  had  shooting  galore. 

I  think  that  no  such  great  wild-life  sights  as  those  of  the  plateau 
regions  of  Africa  ever  were  seen  in  southern  Asia.  Conditions  there  are 
different,  and  usually  the  game  is  widely  scattered.  The  sambar  deer 
and  muntjac  of  the  dense  forests,  the  axis  of  the  bamboo  glades,  the 
thameng  deer  of  the  Burmese  jungles,  the  sladang,  or  gaur,  of  the  awful 
Malay  tangle,  and  the  big  cats  and  canines  will  last  long  and  well.  The 
ibexes,  markhors,  tahr  and  all  the  wild  sheep  eventually  will  be  shot  out 
by  sportsmen  who  are  ' '  sheep  crazy. ' '  The  sheep  and  goats  of  Asia  will 
disappear  soon  after  the  plains  animals  of  Africa,  because  no  big  game 
that  lives  in  the  open  can  much  longer  endure  the  modern,  inexpensive 
long-range  rifles  of  deadly  accuracy  and  limitless  repetition  of  fire. 

Eventually,  I  fear  that  by  some  unlucky  turn  of  Fortune's  wheel 
all  the  native  hunters  of  Asia  will  obtain  rifles;  and  when  they  do,  we 
soon  will  see  the  end  of  the  big  game. 

Even  to-day  we  find  that  the  primitive  conditions  of  1877  have  been 
greatly  changed.  In  the  first  place,  about  every  native  shikaree  (hunter) 
owns  a  rifle,  at  a  cost  of  about  $25;  and  many  other  natives  possess 
guns,  and  assume  to  hunt  with  them.  The  logical  conclusion  of  this  is 
more  hunting  and  less  game.  The  development  of  the  country  has  re- 
duced the  cover  for  game.  New  roads  and  railways  have  made  the  game 
districts  easily  accessible,  and  real  sportsmen  are  now  three  or  four  times 
as  numerous  as  they  were  in  1877. 

At  Toonacadavoo.  in  the  Animallai  Hills  where  thirty-five  years  ago 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  ASIAN  GAME  189 

there  modestly  nestled  on  the  ridge  beside  the  river  only  Forest  Ranger 
Theobold's  bungalow,  built  of  mud  and  covered  with  grass  thatch  and 
bamboo  rats,  there  is  now  a  regular  hill  station  lighted  by  electricity,  a 
modern  sanatorium  high  up  on  the  bluff,  a  club,  golf  links,  and  other 
modern  improvements.  In  my  day  there  were  exactly  four  guns  on  the 
Animallais.  Now  there  are  probably  one  hundred;  and  it  is  easy  to 
guess  how  much  big  game  remains  on  the  Delectable  Mountains  in 
comparison  with  the  golden  days  of  1877.  I  should  say  that  there  is 
now  only  one  game  animal  for  every  twenty-five  that  were  there  in  my 
day. 

I  am  told  that  it  is  like  that  all  over  India.  Beyond  question,  the 
gun-sellers  and  gun-users  have  been  busy  there,  as  everywhere  else. 
The  game  of  India  is  on  the  toboggan  slide,  and  the  old  days  of  abundance 
have  gone  forever. 

The  first  fact  that  strikes  us  in  the  face  is  the  impending  fate  of  the 
great  Indian  rhinoceros,  an  animal  as  wonderful  as  the  Titanothere  or 
the  Megatherium.  It  is  like  a  gift  handed  down  to  us  straight  out  of 
the  Pleistocene  age,  a  million  years  back.  The  British  paleontologists 
to-day  marvel  at  Elephas  ganesa,  and  by  great  labor  dig  his  bones  out  of 
the  Sewalik  rocks,  but  what  one  of  them  all  has  yet  made  a  move  to  save 
Rhinoceros  indicus  from  the  quick  extermination  that  soon  will  be  his 
portion  unless  he  is  accorded  perpetual  and  real  protection  from  the 
assaults  of  man? 

Let  the  mammalogists  of  the  world  face  this  fact.  The  available 
cover  of  the  Indian  rhinoceros  is  alarmingly  decreasing,  throughout 
Assam  and  Bengal  where  the  behemoth  of  the  jungle  has  a  right  to  live. 
It  is  believed  that  the  few  remaining  rhinos  are  being  shot  much  faster 
then  they  are  breeding ;  and  what  will  be  the  effect  of  this  upon  an  animal 
that  requires  fourteen  years  to  reach  full  maturity?  To-day,  the  most 
wonderful  hoofed  mammal  of  all  Asia  is  booked  for  extermination,  and 
unless  very  radical  measures  for  its  preservation  are  at  once  carried  into 
effect,  it  is  probable  that  twenty  years  more  will  see  the  last  Indian  rhino 
go  down  to  rise  no  more.  One  remedy  would  be  a  good,  ample  rhinoceros 
preserve;  and  another,  the  most  absolute  and  permanent  protection 
for  the  species,  all  along  the  line.  Half-way  measures  will  not  suffice. 
It  is  time  to  ring  in  a  general  alarm. 

During  the  past  eighteen  years,  only  three  specimens  of  that  species 
have  come  out  of  India  for  the  zoological  gardens  and  parks  of  the  world, 
and  I  think  there  are  only  five  in  captivity,  all  told. 

We  are  told  that  in  India  now  the  natives  are  permitted  to  have  about 
all  the  firearms  they  can  pay  for.  Naturally,  in  a  country  containing 
over  300,000,000  people  this  is  a  deadly  thing.  Of  course  there  are  shoot- 
ing regulations,  many  of  them;  but  their  enforcement  is  so  imperfect 
that  it  is  said  that  the  natives  are  attacking  the  big  game  on  all  sides, 
with  deadly  effect.  I  fear  it  is  utterly  impossible  for  the  Indian  govern- 
ment to  put  enough  wardens  into  the  field  to  watch  the  doings  of  the 
grand  army  of  native  poachers. 


190  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Fortunately,  the  Indian  native, — unlike  the  western  frontiersman, — 
does  not  contend  that  he  owns  the  big  game,  or  that  "all  men  are  born 
free  and  equal."  At  the  same  time,  he  means  to  have  his  full  share  of  it, 
to  eat,  and  to  sell  in  various  forms  for  cash.  Even  in  India,  the  sale-of- 
game  dragon  has  reared  its  head,  and  is  to-day  in  need  of  being  scotched 
with  an  iron  hand. 

When  I  received  direct  from  a  friend  in  the  native  state  of  Kashmir  a 
long  printed  circular  setting  forth  the  hunting  laws  and  game-protective 
measures  of  that  very  interesting  principality,  it  gave  me  a  shock.  It  was 
disquieting  to  be  thus  assured  that  the  big  game  of  Kashmir  has  dis- 
appeared to  such  an  extent  that  strong  protective  measures  are  necessary. 
It  was  as  if  the  Chief  Eskimo  of  Etah  had  issued  a  strong  proclamation 
for  the  saving  of  the  musk-ox. 

In  Kashmir,  the  destruction  of  game  has  become  so  serious  that  a 
Game  Preservation  Department  has  been  created,  with  the  official  staff 
that  such  an  organization  requires.  The  game  laws  are  printed  annually, 
and  any  variations  from  them  may  be  made  only  by  the  authority  of  the 
Maharajah  himself.  Up  to  date,  eight  game  jjreserves  have  been  created, 
having  a  total  area  of  about  thee  hundred  square  miles.  In  addition  to 
these,  there  are  twelve  small  preserves,  each  having  an  area  of  from 
twenty-five  to  fifty  square  miles.  By  their  locations,  these  seem  to 
provide  for  all  the  species  of  big  game  that  are  found  in  Kashmir, — the 
ibex,  two  forms  of  markhor,  the  tahr,  Himalayan  bighorn  sheep,  bur- 
rhel  and  goral. 

In  our  country  we  have  several  states  that  are  very  large,  very  di- 
versified in  surface,  and  still  inhabited  by  large  game.  Has  any  one  of 
those  states  created  a  series  of  game  preserves  even  half  way  comparable 
with  those  of  Kashmir?  I  think  not.  Montana  has  made  a  beginning 
with  two  preserves, — Snow  Creek  and  the  Pryor  Mountains, — but  be- 
side the  splendid  series  of  Kashmir  they  are  not  worthy  of  serious  mention. 

And  then  following  closely  in  the  wake  of  that  document  came  a 
lengthy  article  in  the  "Proceedings  of  the  Zoological  Society  of  London," 
by  E.  C.  Stebbing,  in  which  a  correspondent  of  the  Indian  Field  clearly 
sets  forth  the  fact  that  the  big  game  of  the  Himalayas  now  is  menaced 
by  a  peril  new  to  our  consideration,  but  of  a  most  deadly  character. 
Hear  him : 

' '  In  this  inventory  (of  game  destroyers  in  India) ,  the  Gurkha  soldier 
does  not  find  a  place,  for  he  belongs  to  a  class  which  he  amply  fills  by 
himself  with  his  small  but  very  important  personality.  He  deserves 
separate  notice.  From  the  banks  of  the  Sarda  on  the  frontier  of  Nepal, 
to  the  banks  of  the  Indus,  the  battalions  of  these  gallant  little  men  are 
scattered  in  cantonments  all  along  the  outer  spurs  of  the  Himalayan 
range.  In  seven  or  eight  of  these  locations  there  are  at  least  14,000  of 
these  disciplined  warriors,  who,  in  the  absence  of  opportunities  for 
spilling  human  blood  legitimately,  are  given  a  free  hand  for  slaughtering 
wild  animals,  along  five-hundred  miles  of  the  best  hunting  grounds  of 
Upper  India." 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  ASIAN  GAME  191 

Now,  since  those  facts  must  be  true  as  reported,  do  they  not  in  them- 
selves constitute  a  severe  arraignment  of  the  Indian  government  ?  Why- 
should  that  state  of  game  slaughter  endure,  when  a  single  executive  order 
to  the  C.  O.  of  each  post  would  effectually  stop  it? 

In  the  making  of  game  preserves,  or  "sanctuaries"  as  they  are  called 
out  there,  the  Government  of  India  has  shown  rare  and  commendable 
diligence.  The  total  number  is  too  great  for  enumeration  here.  The 
native  state  of  Mysore  has  seven,  and  the  Nilgiri  Hills  have  sanctuaries 
aggregating  about  100,000  acres  in  area.  In  the  Wynaad  Forest,  my  old 
hunting-grounds  at  Mudumallay  have  been  closed  to  bison  shooting, 
because  of  the  alarming  decrease  of  bison  (gaur)  through  shooting  and 
disease.  The  Kundah  Forest  Reserve  has  been  made  a  partial  game  pre- 
serve, but  the  door  might  as  well  have  been  left  wide  open  as  so  widely 
ajar. 

In  eastern  Bengal  and  Assam,  several  game  preserves  have  been 
created.  On  the  whole,  by  the  diligence  and  thoroughness  with  which 
sanctuaries,  as  they  are  termed,  have  been  created  quite  generally 
throughout  India,  it  is  quite  evident  that  the  government  and  the  sports- 
men of  India  have  become  thoroughly  alarmed  by  the  great  decrease  of 
the  game,  and  the  danger  of  the  extermination  of  species.  In  the  past 
India  has  been  the  finest  and  best-stocked  hunting-ground  of  all  Asia, 
quite  beyond  compare,  and  the  destruction  of  her  once-splendid  fauna 
of  big  game  would  be  a  zoological  calamity. 

Tibet. — As  yet,  Tibet  offers  free  hunting,  without  legal  let  or  hin- 
drance, to  every  sportsman  who  can  climb  up  to  her  lofty,  wind-swept 
and  whizzing-cold  plateau.  The  man  who  hunts  the  Ovis  poll,  superb 
creature  though  it  be,  pays  in  full  for  his  trophies.  The  ibex  of  the  south 
help  out  the  compensatory  damages,  but  even  with  that,  the  list  of 
species  available  in  southern  Tibet  is  painfully  small.  The  Mitchell 
takin  can  be  reached  from  China,  via  Chungking,  after  a  long,  hard 
journey,  over  Consvd  Mason  Mitchell's  trail;  but  the  takin  is  about  the 
only  large  hoofed  game  available. 

The  Altai  Mountains,  of  western  China,  contain  the  magnificent 
Siberian  argali,  the  grandfather  of  all  sheep  species,  whose  horns  must 
be  seen  to  be  believed.  Through  a  quest  for  that  species  the  Russian 
military  authorities  played  upon  Mr.  George  L.  Harrison  and  his  comrade 
a  very  grim  and  unsportsmanlike  joke.  At  the  frontier  military  post, 
on  the  Russo-Chinese  border,  the  two  Americans  were  courteously 
halted,  hospitably  entertained,  and  prevented  from  going  into  the  argali- 
infested  mountains  that  loomed  up  before  them  only  a  few  miles  away' 
The  Russian  officers  said : 

"Sheep?  Why,  if  you  really  want  sheep,  we  will  send  out  some  of  our 
brave  soldiers  to  shoot  some  for  you ;  but  there  is  no  need  for  you  to  take 
the  trouble  to  go  after  them!" 

After  Mr.  Harrison  and  his  comrade  had  spent  $5,000,  and  traveled 
half  way  around  the  world  for  those  sheep,  that  is  in  brief  the  story  of 
how  the  cup  of  Tantalus  was  given  them  by  the  Russians,  actually  at 


192  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

their  goal!     As  spoil-sports,  those  Russian  officers  were  the  champions 
of  the  world. 

Seven  hundred  miles  southeastward  of  the  Altai  Mountains  of  western 
China,  guarded  by  the  dangerous  hostility  of  savage  native  tribes,  there 
exists  and  awaits  the  scientific  explorer,  according  to  report,  an  undis- 
covered wild  horse.  The  Bicolored  Wild  Horse  is  black  and  white,  and 
joy  awaits  the  zoologist  or  sportsman  who  sees  it  first.  Evidently  it 
will  not  soon  be  exterminated  by  modern  rifles. 

The  Impenetrable  Forests. — Although  the  mountains  of  central  Asia 
will  in  time  be  cleared  of  their  big  game, — when  by  hook  and  by  crook 
the  natives  secure  plenty  of  modern  firearms,  —  there  are  places  in  the 
Far  East  that  we  know  will  contain  big  game  forever  and  a  day.  Take 
the  Malay  Peninsula,  Borneo  and  Sumatra  as  examples. 

Mr.  C.  William  Beebe,  who  recently  has  visited  the  Far  East,  has 
described  how  the  state  of  Selangor,  between  Malacca  and  Penang,  has 
taken  on  many  airs  of  improvement  since  1878,  and  sections  of  Sarawak 
Territory  are  being  cut  down  and  burned  for  the  growing  of  rubber. 
Despite  this  I  am  trying  to  think  that  those  developments  menace  the 
total  volume  of  the  wild  life  of  those  regions  but  little.  I  wonder  if  those 
tangled,  illimitable,  ever-renewing  jungles  yet  know  that  their  faces 
have  been  scratched.  White  men  never  will  exterminate  the  big  game 
of  the  really  dense  jungles  of  the  eastern  tropics;  but  with  enough  axes, 
snares,  guns  and  cartridges  the  natives  may  be  able  to  accomplish  it! 

In  Malayana  there  are  some  jungles  so  dense,  so  tangled  with  lianas 
and  so  thorny  with  Livistonias  and  rattan  that  nothing  larger  than  a 
cat  can  make  way  through  them.  There  are  thousands  of  square  miles 
so  boggy,  so  swampy,  so  dark,  gloomy  and  mosquito-ridden  that  all  men 
fear  them  and  avoid  them,  and  in  them  rubber  ctdture  must  be  impossible. 
In  those  silent  places  the  gaur,  the  rhino,  the  Malay  sambar,  the  clouded 
leopard  and  the  orang-utan  surely  are  measurably  safe  from  the  game- 
bags  and  market  gunners  of  the  shooting  world.  It  is  good  to  think  that 
there  is  an  equatorial  belt  of  jungle  clear  around  the  world,  in  Central 
and  South  America  as  well  as  in  the  old  World,  in  which  there  will  be 
little  extermination  in  our  day,  except  of  birds  for  the  feather  market. 
But  the  open  plains,  open  mountains,  and  open  forests  of  Asia  and  Aus- 
tralasia are  in  different  case.     Eventually  they  will  be  "shot  out." 

China,  all  save  Yunnan  and  western  Mongolia,  is  now  horribly 
barren  of  wild  life.  Can  it  ever  be  brought  back?  We  think  it  can  not. 
The  millions  of  population  are  too  many ;  and  except  in  the  great  forest 
tracts,  the  spread  of  modern  firearms  will  make  an  end  of  the  game. 
Already  the  pheasants  are  being  swept  out  of  China  for  the  London 
market,  and  extinction  is  staring  several  species  in  the  face.  On  the  whole, 
the  pheasants  of  the  Old  World  are  being  hit  hard  by  the  rubber-planting 
craze.  Mr.  Beebe  declares  that  owing  to  the  inrush  of  aggressive  capital, 
the  haunts  of  many  species  of  pheasants  are  being  denuded  of  all  their 
natural  cover,  and  some  mountain  species  that  are  limited  to  small  areas 
are  practically  certain  to  be  exterminated  at  an  early  date. 


THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE  OF  ASIAN  GAME 


193 


Destruction  of  Animals  for  Fur. — In  the  far  North,  pnly  the  in- 
terior of  Kamchatka  seems  to  be  safe  from  the  iron  heel  of  the  skin- 
hunter.  A  glance  at  the  list  of  furs  sold  in  London  last  year  reveals  one 
or  two  things  that  are  disquieting.  The  total  catch  of  furs  for  the  year 
1911  is  enormous, — considering  the  great  scarcity  of  wild  life  on  two 
continents.  Incidentally  it  must  be  remembered  that  every  trapper 
carries  a  gun,  and  in  studying  the  fur  list  one  needs  no  help  in  trying  to 
imagine  the  havoc  wrought  with  firearms  on  the  edible  wild  life  of  the 
regions  that  contributed  all  that  fur.  I  have  been  told  by  trappers  that 
as  a  class,  trappers  are  great  killers  of  game. 

In  order  that  the  reader  may  know  by  means  of  definite  figures  the 
extent  to  which  the  world  is  being  raked  and  combed  for  fur-bearing 
animals,  we  append  below  a  statement  copied  from  the  Fur  News  Mag- 
azine for  November,  1912,  of  the  sales  of  the  largest  London  fur  house 
during  the  past  two  years. 

With  varying  emotions  we  call  attention  to  the  wombat  of  Australia, 
3,841;  grebe,  51.261,  and  house  cat,  92,407.  Very  nearly  all  the  totals 
of  Lampson  &  Co.  for  each  species  are  much  lower  for  the  sales  of  1912 
than  for  those  of  1911.     Is  this  fact  significant  of  a  steady  decHne? 

Furs  Sold  By  C.  M.  Lampson  &  Co.,  London 


Totals  for  Totals  for 

igii,  Skins  1912,  Skins 

Raccoon 354,057  215,626 

Musquash  (Muskrat) 3,382,401  2,937,150 

Musquash,  Black 78,363  60,000 

Skunk 1,310,185  979,612 

Cat,  Civet 329,180  229,155 

Opossum,  American 1,011,824  948,189 

Mink 183,574  100,951 

Marten 29,881  26,895 

Fox,  Red 58,900  40,300 

Fox,  Cross 1,294  1,569 

Fox,  Silver 761  590 

Fox,  Grey 43,909  32,471 

Fox,  Kit 30,278  35,222 

Fox,  White 16,709  13,341 

Fox,  Blue 3,137  1,778 

Otter 17,399  13,899 

Sea  Otter 328  202 

Cat,  Wild,  etc 38,870  29,740 

Cat,  House 92,407  65,641 

Lynx 2,424  5,144 

Fisher 1,918  656 

Badger 16,338  15,325 

Beaver 21,137  17,036 

Bear 16,851  13,377 

Wolf 65,893  74,535 

Wolverine 1,530  1,172 

Hair  Seal,  Dry 6,465  5,378 

Grebe 51,261  19,571 

Fur  Seal,  Dry 897  1,453 

Sable,  Russian 10,285  8,972 


194 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


Furs  Sold  By  C.  M.  Lampson  &  Co.,  London 
(Continued) 

Totals  for  Totals  for 

1911,  Skins  1912,  Skins 

Kolinsky 138,921  120,933 

Marten,  Baum 1,853  1,481 

Marten,  Stone 7,504  6,331 

Fitch 26,731  20,400 

Ermine 328,840  248,295 

Squirrel 976,395  707,710 

Saca,  etc 40,982  13,599 

Chinchilla,  Real 6,282  11,457 

Chinchilla,  Bastard 7,533  8,145 

Marten,  Japanese 26,005  3,294 

Sable,  Japanese 1,429  52 

Fox.  Japanese 60,831  13,725 

Badger,  Japanese 183  2,949 

Opossum,  Australian 1,613,799  1,782,364 

Wallaby,  AustraHan 1,003,820  540,608 

Kangaroo,  Australian 21,648  16,193 

Wombat,  Australian 3,841  1,703 

Fox,  Red,  Australian 60,435  40,724 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  DESTRUCTION  OF  BIRDS  IN  THE  FAR  EAST* 

By  C.  William  Beebe 
Curator  of  Birds,  New  York  Zoological  Park 

In  chapter  XIII,  treating  of  the  "  Extermination  of  Birds  for  Women's 
Hats,"  Dr.  Hornaday  has  dealt  fully  with  the  feather  and  plumage  traffic 
after  it  enters  the  brokers'  hands,  and  has  proved  conclusively  that  the 
plumes  of  egrets  are  gathered  from  the  freshly  killed  birds.  We  may 
trace  the  course  of  the  plumes  and  feathers  backward  through  the 
tightly-packed  bales  and  boxes  in  the  holds  of  the  vessels  to  the  ports 
of  the  savage  lands  whence  they  were  shipped;  then  to  the  skilful,  dark 
hands  of  Mexican  peon,  Venezuelan  Indian,  African  negro  or  Asiatic 
Chinaman  or  Malay,  who  stripped  the  skin  from  the  flesh;  and  finally 
to  the  jungle  or  mountain  side  or  terai  where  the  bird  gave  up  its  life 
to  blowpipe,  cross-bow,  blunderbuss  or  carefully  set  snare. 

In  various  trips  to  Mexico,  Venezuela  and  other  countries  in  the 
tropics  of  the  New  World  I  have  seen  many  such  scenes,  but  not  until 
I  had  completed  a  seventeen  months'  expedition  in  search  of  pheasants, 
through  some  twenty  wild  countries  of  Asia  and  the  East  Indies,  did  I 
realize  the  havoc  which  is  being  wrought  week  by  week  everywhere  on 
the  globe.  While  we  were  absent  even  these  few  months  from  the  great 
centers  of  civilization,  tremendous  advances  had  been  made  in  air-ships 
and  the  thousand  and  one  other  modern  phases  of  human  development, 
but  evolution  in  the  world  of  Nature  as  we  observed  it  was  only  destruc- 
tive— a  world-wide  katabolism — a  retrogression  often  discernible  from 
month  to  month.  We  could  scarcely  repeat  the  trip  and  make  the  same 
observations  upon  pheasants,  so  rapidly  is  this  group  of  birds  approach- 
ing extinction. 

The  causes  of  this  destruction  of  wild  life  are  many  and  diverse,  and 
resemble  one  another  only  in  that  they  all  emanate  from  mankind.  To 
the  casual  traveller  the  shooting  and  trapping  of  birds  for  millinery  pur- 
poses at  first  seems  to  hold  an  insignificant  place  among  the  causes. 
But  this  is  only  because  in  many  of  the  larger  ports,  the  protective  laws 
are  more  or  less  operative  and  the  occupation  of  the  plume  hunter  is 

*The  observations  which  furnished  this  valuable  chapter  were  made  by  Mr.  Beebe 
in  1911  while  conducting  an  expedition  in  southern  Asia,  Borneo  and  Java  for  the 
purpose  of  studying  in  Hfe  and  nature  all  the  members  of  the  Pheasant  Family  inhabit- 
ing that  region.  The  results  of  these  studies  and  collections  will  shortly  appear  in  a 
very  complete  monograph  of  the  Phasianidae. — W.  T.  H. 


196  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

carried  on  in  secret  ways.  But  it  is  as  far-reaching  and  insidious  as  any; 
and  when  we  add  to  the  actual  number  of  birds  slain,  the  compound  inter- 
est of  eggs  grown  cold,  of  young  birds  perishing  slowly  from  hunger,  of 
the  thousands  upon  thousands  of  birds  which  fall  wounded  or  dead 
among  the  thick  tropical  jungle  foliage  and  are  lost,  the  total  is  one  of 
ghastly  proportions. 

Not  to  weaken  my  argument  with  too  many  general  statements,  let 
me  take  at  once  some  concrete  cases.  First,  that  of  the  Himalayan 
pheasants  and  game-birds.  In  a  recent  interesting  article  by  E.  P. 
Stebbing*  the  past,  present  and  hoped-for  future  of  game  birds  and 
animals  in  India  is  reviewed.  Unfortunately,  however,  most  of  the  finest 
creatures  in  Asia  live  beyond  the  border  of  the  British  sphere  of  influence, 
and  though  within  sight,  are  absolutely  beyond  reach  of  civilized  law. 
The  heart  of  the  Himalayas, — the  haunts  of  some  of  the  most  beautiful 
birds  in  the  world,  the  tragopans,  the  blood  and  impeyan  pheasants — 
lies  within  the  limits  of  Nepal,  a  little  country  which  time  and  time  again 
has  bade  defiance  to  British  attacks,  and  still  maintains  its  independence. 
From  its  northern  border  Mt.  Everest  looks  down  from  its  most  exalted 
of  all  earthly  summits  and  sees  valley  after  valley  depleted  of  first  one 
bird  and  then  another.  I  have  seen  and  lived  with  Nepalese  shepherds 
who  have  nothing  to  do  month  after  month  but  watch  their  flocks.  In 
the  lofty  solitudes  time  hangs  heavy  on  their  hands,  and  with  true  oriental 
patience  they  weave  loop  after  loop  of  yak-hair  snares,  and  then  set 
them,  not  in  dozens  or  scores,  but  in  hundreds  and  thousands  up  and 
down  the  valleys. 

In  one  locality  seven  great  valleys  had  been  completely  cleared  of 
pheasants,  only  a  single  pair  of  tragopans  remaining;  and  from  one  of 
these  little  brown  men  I  took  two  hundred  nooses  which  had  been  pre- 
pared for  these  lone  survivors.  In  these  cases,  the  birds  were  either 
cooked  and  eaten  at  once,  or  sold  to  some  passing  shepherd  or  lama  for  a 
few  annas.  But  in  other  parts  of  this  unknown  land  systematic  collect- 
ing of  skins  goes  on,  for  bale  after  bale  of  impeyan  and  red  argus  (tra- 
gopan)  pheasant  skins  goes  down  to  the  Calcutta  wharves,  where  its 
infamous  contents,  though  known,  are  safe  from  seizure  under  the  Nepal 
Raja's  seal!  Thus  it  is  that  the  London  feather  sales  still  list  these 
among  the  most  splendid  of  all  living  birds.  And  shame  upon  shame, 
when  we  read  of  80  impeyan  skins  "dull,"  or  "slightly  defective,"  we 
know  that  these  are  female  birds.  Then,  if  ever,  we  realize  that  the  time 
of  the  bird  and  the  beast  is  passing,  the  acme  of  evolution  for  these 
wonderful  beings  is  reached,  and  at  most  we  can  preserve  only  a  small 
fragment  of  them. 

To  the  millinery  hunter,  what  the  egret  is  to  America,  and  the  bird 
of  paradise  to  New  Guinea,  the  impeyan  pheasant  is  to  India — the  most 
coveted  of  all  plumages.  There  is  a  great  tendency  to  blame  the  native 
hunter  for  the  decrease  of  this  and  other  pheasants,  and  from  what  I  have 
personally  seen  in  many  parts  of  the  Himalayas  there  is  no  question  that 

*"Game   Sanctuaries  and  Game  Protection  in  India,"  Proc.  Zool.  Soc,  London, 
1912.     pp.  23-35. 


DESTRUCTION  OF  BIRDS  IN    THE   FAR   EAST 


197 


PHEASAXT  SNARES 

Made  of  Yak  Hair,  Taken  from  a  Shepherd  in  Nepal 

by  Mr.  Beebe 


the  Garwhalese  and  Nepalese 
hill-men  have  wrought  havoc 
among  the  birds.  But  these 
men  are  by  no  means  the  sole 
cause.  As  long  ago  as  1879  we 
read  that  "  The  great  demand 
for  the  brilliant  skins  of  the 
moonal  that  has  existed  for 
many  years  has  led  to  their 
almost  total  extermination  in 
some  parts  of  the  hills,  as  the 
native  shikaris  shoot  and  snare 
for  the  pot  as  well  as  for  skins, 
and  kill  as  many  females  as 
males.  On  the  other  hand, 
though  for  nearly  thirty  years 
my  friend  Mr.  Wilson  has 
yearly  sent  home  from  1,000 
to  1,500  skins  of  this  species 
and  the  tragopan,  there  are 
still  in  the  woods  whence  they 
were  obtained  as  many  as,  if 
not  more  than,  when  he  first 
entered  them,  simply  because  he  has  rigidly  preserved  females  and  nests, 
and  (as  amongst  English  pheasants)  one  cock  suffices  for  several  hens." 
Ignoring  the  uncertainty  of  the  last  statement,  it  is  rather  absurd  to 
think  of  a  single  man  "preserving"  females  and  nests  in  the  Himalayas 
from  1850  to  1880,  when  the  British  Government,  despite  most  efficient 
laws  and  worthy  efforts  is  unable  to  protect  the  birds  of  these  wild  re- 
gions to-day.  The  statement  that  after  thirty  to  forty-five  thousand 
cock  impeyans  were  shot  or  snared,  as  many  or  more  than  the  original 
quota  remained,  could  only  emanate  from  the  mind  of  a  professional 
feather-hunter,  and  Hume  should  not  be  blamed  for  more  than  the  mere 
repetition  of  such  figures.  Let  it  be  said  to  the  credit  of  Wilson,  the 
slaughterer  of  something  near  forty-five  thousand  impeyans,  that  he  was 
a  careful  observer  of  the  birds'  habits,  and  has  given  us  an  excellent 
account,  somewhat  coloured  by  natives,  but  on  the  whole,  the  best  we 
have  had  in  the  past.  But  it  is  not  pleasant  to  read  of  his  waiting  until 
"twenty  or  thirty  have  got  up  and  ahghted  in  the  surrounding  trees,  and 
have  then  walked  up  to  the  different  trees  and  fired  at  those  I  wished  to 
procure  without  alarming  the  rest,  only  those  very  close  to  the  one  fired 
at  being  disturbed  at  each  report." 

Hume's  opinion  that  in  1879  there  were  scores  of  places  where  one 
might  secure  from  ten  to  eighteen  birds  in  a  day,  is  certainly  not  true 
to-day.  Indeed,  as  early  as  1858  we  read  that  "This  splendid  bird,  once 
so  abundant  on  the  Western  Himalayas  is  now  far  from  beng  so,  in 
consequence  of  the  numbers  killed  by  sportsmen  on  account  of  its  beauty. 
Whole  tracts  of  mountain  forest  once  frequented  by  the  moonal  are  now 


198 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


SILVER  PHEASANT  SKINS  SEIZED  AT  RANGOON,  BRITISH  BURMA 

About  600  Skins  out  of  Several  Thousand  Confiscated  in  the  Custom  House,  on  their  way  to  the 

London  Feather  Market.      Photographed  by  Mr.  Beebe 


almost  without  a  single  specimen."  The  same  aiithor  goes  on  naively 
to  tell  the  reader  that  "Among  the  most  pleasant  reminiscences  of  by- 
gone days  is  a  period  of  eleven  days,  spent  by  the  author  and  a  friend 
on  the  Choor  Mountain  near  Simla,  when  among  other  trophies  were 
numbered  sixty-eight  moonal  pheasants,  etc." 

For  some  unaccountable  reason  there  is,  or  was  for  many  years,  a 
very  prevalent  idea  that  the  enormous  number  of  skins  which  have  poured 
into  the  London  market  were  from  birds  bred  in  the  vicinity  of  Calcutta. 
When  we  remember  the  intense  heat  of  that  low-lying  city,  and  learn 
from  the  records  of  the  Calcutta  Zoological  Garden  that  impeyans  and 
tragopans  are  even  shorter-lived  than  in  Europe,  the  absurdity  of  the 
idea  is  apparent.  In  spite  of  numberless  inquiries  throughout  India,  I 
failed  to  learn  of  a  single  captive  young  bird  ever  hatched  and  reared 
even  in  the  high,  cool,  hill-stations.  The  commercial  value  of  an  impeyan 
skin  has  varied  from  five  dollars  to  twenty  dollars,  according  to  the  num- 
ber received  annually.  In  1876  an  estimate  placed  the  monthly  average 
of  impeyans  received  in  London  at  from  two  to  eight  hundred. 

In  such  a  case  as  Nepal,  direct  protective  laws  are  of  no  avail.  All 
humane  arguments  are  useless,  but  if  the  markets  aJ:  the  other  end  can 
be  closed,  the  slaughter  will  cease  instantly  and  automatically. 


DESTRUCTION  OF  BIRDS  IN   THE   FAR  EAST  199 


DEADFALL  TRAPS  IN  BURMA 

A  Long  Series  set  Across  a  Valley,  by  the  Kachins  of  the  Burma-Chinese  Border.    A  Wholesale 
Method  of  Wild-life  Slaughter,  Photographed  by  C.  William  Beebe,  1910 

As  a  contrast  to  the  milliner}'  hunter  of  fifty  years  ago  it  is  refreshing 
to  find  that  at  last  sincere  efforts  are  being  made  in  British  possessions 
to  stop  this  traffic.  I  happened  to  be  at  Rangoon  when  six  large  bales 
of  pheasant  skins  were  seized  by  the  Custom  officials.  A  Chinaman  had 
brought  them  from  Yunnan  via  Bhamo,  and  was  preparing  to  ship  them 
as  ducks'  feathers.  Two  of  the  bales  were  opened  for  my  inspection. 
The  first  contained  about  five  hundred  Lady  Amherst  pheasant  skins, 
falling  to  pieces  and  lacking  heads  and  legs.  The  second  held  over  four 
hundred  silver  pheasants,  in  almost  perfect  condition.  The  chief  collector 
had  put  the  absolutely  prohibitive  fine  of  £200  on  them,  and  was  waiting 
for  the  expiration  of  the  legal  number  of  days  before  burning  the  entire 
lot.  They  must  have  represented  years  of  work  in  decimating  the 
pheasant  fauna  of  western  China. 

Far  up  in  the  wilderness  of  northern  Burma,  and  over  the  Yunnan 
border,  we  often  came  upon  some  of  the  most  ingenious  examples  of 
native  trapping,  a  system  which  we  found  repeated  in  the  Malay  States, 
Borneo,  China  and  other  parts  of  the  Far  East.  A  low  bamboo  fence  is 
built  directly  across  a  steep  valley  or  series  of  valleys,  about  half  way 
from  the  summit  to  the  lower  end,  and  about  every  fifteen  feet  a  narrow 
opening  is  left,  over  which  a  heavy  log  is  suspended.  Any  creature 
attempting  to  make  its  way  through,  treads  upon  several  small  sticks 
and  by  so  doing  springs  the  trap  and  the  dead-fall  claims  a  victim. 


200  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

When  a  country  is  systematically  strung  with  traps  such  as  these,  sooner 
or  later  all  but  a  pitiful  remnant  of  the  smaller  mammals,  birds  and 
reptiles  are  certain  to  be  wiped  out.  Morning  after  morning  I  have 
visited  such  a  runway  and  found  dead  along  its  path,  what  must  have 
been  all  the  walking,  running  or  crawling  creatures  which  the  night 
before  had  sought  the  water  at  the  bottom;  pheasants,  cobras,  mouse- 
deer,  rodents,  civets,  and  members  of  many  other  groups.  In  some 
countries  nooses  instead  of  dead-falls  guard  the  openings,  but  the  result 
is  equally  deadly. 

I  have  described  this  method  of  trapping  because  of  its  future  im- 
portance in  the  destruction  of  wild  life  in  the  Far  East.  The  Chinaman 
in  all  his  many  millions  is  undergoing  a  remarkably  swift  and  radical 
evolution  both  of  character  and  dress.  In  many  ways,  if  only  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  patient,  thrifty  store-keeper  he  is  a  most  powerful 
factor  in  the  East,  and  is  becoming  more  so.  In  many  cases  he  imitates 
the  white  nations  by  cutting  off  his  queue  and  altering  his  dress.  In 
some  mysterious  correlated  way  his  diet  seems  simultaneously  affected, 
and  while  for  untold  generations  rice  and  fish  has  satisfied  all  his  gas- 
tronomic desires,  a  new  craving,  that  for  meat,  has  come  to  him.  The 
result  is  apparent  in  many  parts  of  the  East.  The  Chinaman  is  willing 
and  able  to  pay  for  meat,  and  the  native  finds  a  new  market  for  the 
creatures  about  him.  Again  and  again  when  I  wished  a  few  specimens  of 
some  certain  pheasant  I  had  but  to  hail  passing  canoes  and  bid  a  few 
annas  or  "cash"  or  "ringits"  higher  than  the  prospective  Chinese  pur- 
chaser would  give,  and  the  pheasants  were  mine. 

In  the  catalogues  of  the  brokers'  sales  of  feathers  we  read  of  many 
thousands  of  the  wonderful  ocellated  wing  feathers  of  the  argus  pheasant, 
but  no  less  horrible  is  the  sight  of  a  canoe  crammed  with  the  bedraggled 
bodies  of  these  magnificent  birds  on  their  way  to  some  Chinese  hamlet 
where  they  will  be  sold  for  a  pittance,  the  flesh  eaten  to  the  last  tendon 
and  the  feathers  given  to  the  children  and  puppies  to  play  with.  The 
newly-aroused  appetite  of  the  Mongolian  will  soon  be  an  important 
factor  in  the  extermination  of  animals  and  birds,  few  species  being  exempt, 
for  the  Chinaman  lives  up  to  his  reputation  and  is  not  squeamish  as  to 
the  nature  of  his  meat. 

Before  we  leave  the  subject  of  Chinamen  let  us  consider  another 
recent  factor  in  the  destruction  of  wild  life  which  is  at  present  widely 
operative  in  China  itself.  This  is  the  cold  storage  warehouse,  of  which 
six  or  eight  enormous  ones  have  gone  up  in  different  parts  of  the  East. 
To  speak  in  detail  only  of  the  one  at  Hankow,  six  hundred  miles  up  the 
Yangtze,  we  found  it  to  be  the  largest  structure  in  the  city.  Surrounded 
by  a  high  wall,  with  each  entrance  and  exit  guarded  by  armed  Sikhs, 
it  seemed  like  the  feudal  castle  of  some  medieval  baron.  Why  such 
secrecy  is  necessary  I  could  not  learn,  as  there  are  no  laws  against  its 
business.  But  so  carefully  guarded  is  its  premises  that  until  a  short 
time  ago  even  the  British  consul-general  of  Hankow  had  not  been  allowed 
to  enter.     He,  however,  at  last  refused  to  sign  the  papers  for  any  more 


DESTRUCTION  OF  BIRDS   IN   THE   FAR   EAST  201 

outgoing  shipments  until  he  should  be  allowed  to  see  what  was  going  on 
within  the  warehouse.  I  hoped  to  be  able  to  look  over  some  of  the 
frozen  pheasants  for  interesting  scientific  material,  but  of  course  was  not 
allowed  to  do  so. 

Although  here  in  the  heart  of  China,  outside  changes  are  not  felt  so 
strongly  and  the  newly-acquired  meat  diet  of  the  border  and  emigrant 
Chinese  is  hardly  apparent,  these  warehouses  have  opened  up  a  new 
source  of  revenue,  which  has  met  with  instant  response.  Thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  wild  shot  or  trapped  pheasants  and  other  birds 
are  now  brought  to  these  establishments  by  the  natives  from  far  and 
near.  The  birds  are  frozen,  and  twice  a  year  shipped  on  specially  re- 
frigerated P.  and  O.  steamships  to  England  and  the  continent  of  Europe 
where  they  seem' to  find  a  ready  sale.  Pigs  and  chickens  also  figure  in 
the  shipments.  Now  the  pheasants  have  for  centuries  existed  in  enormous 
numbers  in  the  endless  ricefields  of  China,  without  doing  any  damage 
to  the  crops.  In  fact  they  could  not  be  present  in  such  numbers  without 
being  an  important  factor  in  keeping  down  insect  and  other  enemies 
of  the  grain.  When  their  numbers  are  decimated  as  they  are  being  at 
present,  there  must  eventually  result  a  serious  upsetting  of  the  balance 
of  nature.  Let  us  hope  that  in  some  way  this  may  be  avoided,  and  that 
the  present  famine  deaths  of  thirty  thousand  or  more  in  some  provinces 
will  not  be  increased  many  fold. 

When  I  started  on  this  search  for  pheasants  I  was  repeatedly  told 
by  old  explorers  in  the  east  that  my  task  would  be  very  different  from 
theirs  of  thirty  years  ago;  that  I  would  find  steamers,  railroads  and 
automobiles  where  formerly  were  only  canoes  and  jungle.  I  indeed  fotmd 
this  as  reported,  but  while  my  task  was  difi'erent  it  was  made  no  easier. 
Formerly,  to  be  sure,  one  had  from  the  start  to  paddle  slowly  or  push 
along  the  trails  made  by  natives  or  game  animals.  But  then  the  wild 
life  was  encountered  at  once,  while  I  found  it  always  far  from  the  end  of 
the  steamer's  route  or  the  railroad's  terminal,  and  still  to  be  reached 
only  by  the  most  primitive  modes  of  travel. 

I  cite  this  to  give  point  to  my  next  great  cause  of  destruction;  the 
burning  and  clearing  of  vast  stretches  of  country  for  the  planting  of 
rubber  trees.  The  East  seems  rubber  mad,  and  whether  the  enormous 
output  which  will  result  from  the  millions  of  trees  set  out  month  after 
month  will  be  profitable,  I  cannot  say.  I  can  think  only  of  the  vanish- 
ing of  the  entire  fauna  and  flora  of  many  districts  which  I  have  seen  as  a 
direct  result  of  this  commercial  activity.  One  leaves  Port  Swcttenham 
on  the  west  coast  of  Selangor,  and  for  the  hour's  run  to  Kuala  Lumpur 
sees  hardly  anything  but  vast  radiating  lines  of  spindling  rubber  trees, 
all  underbrush  cleared,  all  native  growths  vanished.  From  Kuala  Lum- 
pur to  Kuala  Kubu  at  the  very  foot  of  the  mountain  backbone  of  the 
Malay  Peninsula,  the  same  holds  true.  And  where  some  area  appears 
not  under  cultivation,  the  climbing  fern  and  a  coarse,  useless  "lalang" 
grass  covers  every  inch  of  ground.  One  can  hardly  imagine  a  more 
complete  blotting  out  of  the  native  fauna  and  flora  of  any  one  limited 


202  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

region.  And  ever-extending  roads  for  the  increasing  motor  cars  are 
widening  the  cleared  zone,  mile  after  mile  to  the  north  and  south. 

In  this  region,  as  we  pushed  on  over  the  mountains  into  the  wilderness 
of  Pahang,  we  saw  little  of  the  actual  destruction  of  the  primeval  native 
growth,  but  elsewhere  it  became  a  common  sight.  Once,  for  many  days 
we  studied  the  wonderful  life  of  a  jungle  which  stretched  up  to  our  very 
camp.  Troops  of  rollicking  wa-was  or  gibbons  frequented  the  forest; 
squirrels,  tupaias,  birds  and  insects  in  myriads  were  everywhere  during 
the  day.  Great  fruit-bats,  flying  lemurs,  owls  and  other  nocturnal 
creatures  made  the  evenings  and  nights  full  of  interest. 

And  then,  one  day  without  warning  came  the  sound  of  an  ax,  and 
another  and  another.  From  that  moment  the  songs,  cries,  chirps  and 
roars  of  the  jungle  were  seldom  heard  from  our  camp.  Every  day  saw 
new  phalanxes  of  splendid  primeval  trees  fallen,  or  half  suspended  in 
their  rigging  of  lianas.  The  leaves  withered,  the  flower  petals  fell  and 
we  heard  no  more  the  crackling  of  bamboos  in  the  wind.  Then  the 
pitiful  survivors  of  the  destruction  were  brought  to  us;  now  a  baby 
flying  lemur,  flung  from  its  hole  by  the  falling  of  some  tree;  young 
tupaias,  nestling  birds;  a  few  out  of  the  thousands  of  creatures  from 
insects  to  mammals  which  were  slain  so  that  a  Chinaman  or  Malay  might 
eke  a  few  dollars,  four  or  five  years  hence,  from  a  grove  of  rubber  trees. 
I  do  not  say  it  is  wrong.  Man  has  won  out,  and  might  is  right,  as  since 
the  dawn  of  creation;  but  to  the  onlooker,  to  the  lover  of  nature  and  the 
animal  world  it  is  a  terrible,  a  hopeless  thing. 

One  cannot  at  present  leave  the  tourist  line  of  travel  in  the  East 
without  at  once  encountering  evidence  of  the  wholesale  direct  slaughter 
of  wild  life,  or  its  no  less  certain  extermination  by  the  elimination  of  the 
haunts  and  the  food  plants  of  the  various  beasts  and  birds. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  SAVAGE  VIEW-POINT  OF  THE  GUNNER 

The  mental  attitude  of  the  men  who  shoot  constitutes  a  deadly  factor 
in  the  destruction  of  wild  life  and  the  extermination  of  species.  Fully 
ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  sportsmen,  gunners  and  other  men  and  boys 
who  kill  game,  all  over  the  world  and  in  all  nations,  regard  game  birds 
and  mammals  only  as  things  to  be  killed  and  eaten,  and  not  as  creatures 
worth  preserving  for  their  beauty  or  their  interest  to  mankind.  This  is 
precisely  the  viewpoint  of  the  cave-man  and  the  savage,  and  it  has  come 
down  from  the  Man-with-a-Club  to  the  Man-with-a-Gun  absolutely  un- 
changed save  for  one  thing:  the  latter  sometimes  is  prompted  to  save 
to-day  in  order  to  slaughter  to-morrow. 

The  above  statement  of  an  existing  fact  may  seem  harsh;  and  some 
persons  may  be  startled  by  it;  but  it  is  based  on  an  acquaintance  with 
thousands  of  men  who  shoot  all  kinds  of  game,  all  over  the  world.  My 
critics  surely  will  admit  that  my  opportunities  to  meet  the  sportsmen  and 
gunners  of  the  world  are,  and  for  thirty-five  years  have  been,  rather 
favorable.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  think  the  efforts  of  the  hunters  of  my 
personal  acquaintance  have  covered  about  seven-tenths  of  the  hunting 
grounds  of  the  world.  If  the  estimate  that  I  have  formed  of  the  average 
hunter's  viewpoint  is  wrong,  or  even  partially  so,  I  will  be  glad  to  have 
it  proven  in  order  that  I  may  reform  my  judgment  and  apologize. 

In  working  with  large  bodies  of  bird-shooting  sportsmen  I  have 
steadily — and  also  painfully — been  impressed  by  their  intentness  on 
killing,  and  by  the  fact  that  they  seek  to  preserve  game  only  to  kill  it!  Who 
ever  saw  a  bird-shooter  rise  in  a  convention  and  advocate  the  preserva- 
tion of  any  species  of  game  bird  on  account  of  its  beauty  or  its  esthetic 
interest  alivef  I  never  did;  and  I  have  sat  in  many  conventions  of 
sportsmen.  All  the  talk  is  of  open  seasons,  bag  limits  and  killing  rights. 
The  man  who  has  the  hardihood  to  stand  up  and  propose  a  five-year 
close  season  has  "a  hard  row  to  hoe."  Men  rise  and  say:  "It's  all 
nonsense!    There's  plenty  of  quail  shooting  on  Long  Island  yet." 

Throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  America,  the  ruling  passion  is 
to  kill  as  long  as  anything  killable  remains.  The  man  who  will  openly 
advocate  the  stopping  of  quail-shooting  because  the  quails  are  of  such 
great  value  to  the  farmers,  or  because  they  are  so  beautiful  and  compan- 
ionable to  man,  receives  no  sympathy  from  ninety  per  cent  of  the  bird- 
killing  sportsmen.  The  remaining  ten  per  cent  think  seriously  about 
the  matter,  and  favor  long  close  seasons.  It  is  my  impression  that  of 
the  men  who  shoot,  it  is  only  among  the  big-game  hunters  that  we  find 


204  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

much  genuine  admiration  for  game  animals,  or  any  feeling  remotely 
resembling  regard  for  it. 

The  moment  that  a  majority  of  American  gunners  concede  the  fact 
that  game  birds  are  worth  preserving  for  their  beauty,  and  their  value  as 
living  neighbors  to  man,  from  that  moment  there  is  hope  for  the  saving 
of  the  Remnant.  That  will  indeed  be  the  beginning  of  a  new  era,  of  a 
millennium  in  fact,  in  the  preservation  of  wild  life.  It  will  then  be  easy 
to  enact  laws  for  ten-year  close  seasons  on  whole  groups  of  species.  Think 
what  it  would  mean  for  such  a  close  season  to  be  enacted  for  all  the 
grouse  of  the  United  States,  all  the  shore-birds  of  the  United  States,  or 
the  wild  turkey  wherever  found! 

To-day,  the  great — indeed,  the  only — opponents  of  long  close  seasons 
on  game  birds  are  the  gunners.  Whenever  and  wherever  you  introduce 
a  bill  to  pro\dde  such  a  season,  you  will  find  that  this  is  true.  The  gun 
clubs  and  the  Downtrodden  Hunters'  and  Anglers'  Protective  Associa- 
tions will  be  quick  to  go  after  their  representatives,  and  oppose  the  bill. 
And  state  senators  and  assemblymen  will  think  very  hard  and  with 
strong  courage  before  they  deliberately  resolve  to  do  their  duty  regard- 
less of  the  opposition  of  "a  large  body  of  sportsmen," — men  who  have 
votes,  and  who  know  how  to  take  revenge  on  lawmakers  who  deprive 
them  of  their  "right"  to  kill.  The  greatest  speech  ever  made  in  the 
Mexican  Congress  was  uttered  by  the  member  who  solemnly  said:  "I 
rise  to  sacrifice  ambition  to  honor!" 

Unfortunately,  the  men  who  shoot  have  become  possessed  of  the  idea 
that  they  have  certain  inherent,  God-given  "rights "  to  kill  game!  Now, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  sportsman  with  a  one-hundred-dollar  Fox  gun  in  his 
hands,  a  two-hundred-dollar  dog  at  his  heels  and  five  one-hundred-dollar 
bills  in  his  pocket  has  no  more  "right"  to  kill  a  covey  of  quail  on  Long 
Island  than  my  milkman  has  to  elect  that  it  shall  be  let  alone  for  the 
pleasure  of  his  children!  The  time  has  come  when  the  people  who  don't 
shoot  must  do  one  of  two  things: 

1.  They  must  demonstrate  the  fact  that  they  have  rights  in  the 

wild  creatures,  and  demand  their  recognition,  or 

2.  See  the  killable  game  all  swept  off  the  continent  by  the  Army 

of  Destruction. 

Really,  it  is  to  me  very  strange  that  gUDners  never  care  to  save  game 
birds  on  account  of  their  beauty.  One  living  bob  white  on  a  fence  is 
better  than  a  score  in  a  bloody  game-bag.  A  live  squirrel  in  a  tree  is 
poetry  in  motion ;  but  on  the  table  a  squirrel  is  a  rodent  that  tastes  as  a 
rat  smells.  Beside  the  ocean  a  flock  of  sandpipers  is  needed  to  complete 
the  beautiful  picture;  but  on  the  table  a  sandpiper  is  beneath  contempt. 
A  live  deer  trotting  over  a  green  meadow,  waving  a  triangular  white  flag, 
is  a  sight  to  thrill  any  human  ganglion;  but  a  deer  lying  dead, — unless  it 
has  an  exceptionally  fine  head, — is  only  so  much  butcher's  meat. 

One  of  the  finest  sights  I  ever  saw  in  Montana  was  a  big  flock  of  sage 
grouse  slowly  stalking  over  a  grassy  flat  thinly  sprinkled  with  sage-brush. 
It  was  far  more  inspiring  than  any  pile  of  dead  birds  that  I  ever  saw. 


206  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

I  remember  scores  of  beautiful  game  birds  that  I  have  seen  and  not 
killed ;  but  of  all  the  game  birds  that  I  have  eaten  or  tried  to  eat  in  New 
York,  I  remember  with  sincere  pleasure  only  one.  Some  of  the  ancient 
cold-storage  candidates  I  remember  "for  cause,"  as  the  lawyers  say. 

Sportsmen  and  gunners,  for  God's  sake  elevate  your  viewpoint  of  the 
game  of  the  world.  Get  out  of  the  groove  in  which  man  has  run  ever 
since  the  days  of  Adam!  There  is  something  in  a  game  bird  over  and 
above  its  pound  of  flesh.  You  don't  "need"  the  meat  any  longer;  for 
you  don't  know  what  hunger  is,  save  by  reading  of  it.  Try  the  field- 
glass  and  the  camera,  instead  of  the  everlasting  gun.  Any  fool  can  take 
a  five-dollar  gun  and  kill  a  bird ;  but  it  takes  a  genius  to  photograph  one 
wild  bird  and  get  "a  good  one."  As  hunters,  the  camera  men  have  the 
best  of  it.  One  good  live-bird  photograph  is  more  of  a  trophy  and  a 
triumph  than  a  bushel  of  dead  birds.  The  birds  and  mammals  now  are 
literally  dying  for  your  help  in  the  making  of  long  close  seasons,  and  in 
the  real  stoppage  of  slaughter.  Can  you  not  hear  the  call  of  the  wild 
remnant  ? 

It  is  time  for  the  people  who  don't  shoot  to  call  a  halt  on  those  who 
do;  "and  if  this  be  treason,  then  let  my  enemies  make  the  most  of  it!" 

Since  the  above  was  written,  I  have  read  in  the  Outdoor  World  for 
April,  1912,  the  views  of  a  veteran  sportsman  and  writer,  Mr.  Emerson 
Hough,  on  the  wild-life  situation  as  it  seems  to  him  to-day.  It  is  a  strong 
utterance,  even  though  it  reaches  a  pessimistic  and  gloomy  conclusion 
which  I  do  not  share.  Altogether,  however,  its  breadth  of  view,  its  gen- 
eral accuracy,  and  its  incisiveness,  entitle  it  to  a  full  hearing.  The  follow- 
ing is  only  an  extract  from  a  lengthy  article  entitled,  "God's  Acre:" 

EMERSON  HOUGH'S  VIEW  OF  THE  SITUATION 

The  truth  is  none  the  less  the  truth  because  it  is  unpleasant  to  face.  There  is  no 
well  posted  sportsman  in  America,  no  manufacturer  of  sporting  goods  in  America,  no 
man  well  versed  in  American  outdoor  matters,  who  does  not  know  that  we  are  at  the 
evening  of  the  day  of  open  sport  in  America.  Our  old  ways  have  failed,  all  of  them 
have  failed.  The  declining  fortunes  of  the  best  sportsman's  journals  of  America  would 
prove  that,  if  proof  were  asked.  Our  sportsmanship  has  failed.  Our  game  laws  have 
failed,  and  we  know  they  have  failed.  Our  game  is  almost  gone,  and  we  know  it  is 
almost  gone.  America  has  changed  and  we  know  that  it  has  changed,  although  we 
have  not  changed  with  it.  The  old  America  is  done  and  it  is  gone,  and  we  know  that 
to  be  the  truth.  The  old  order  passeth,  and  we  know  that  the  new  order  must  come 
soon  if  it  is  to  work  any  salvation  for  our  wild  game  and  our  life  in  the  open  in  pursuit 
of  it. 

There  are  man}''  reasons  for  this  fact,  these  facts.  Perhaps  the  greatest  lies  in  the 
steady  advance  of  civilization  into  the  wilderness,  the  usurpation  for  agricultural  or 
industrial  use  of  many  of  the  ancient  breeding  and  feeding  places  of  the  wild  game. 
All  over  the  West  and"  now  all  over  Canada,  the  plow  advances,  that  one  engine  which 
cannot  be  gainsaid,  which  never  turns  a  backward  furrow. 

Another  great  agency  is  the  rapid  perfection  of  transportation  all  over  the  world. 
Take  the  late  influx  of  East  African  literature.  If  there  really  were  not  access  to  that 
country  we  would  not  have  this  literature,  would  not  have  so  many  pictures  from  that 
country.  And  if  even  Africa  will  soon  be  overrun,  if  even  Africa  soon  will  be  shot  out, 
what  hope  is  there  for  the  game  of  the  wholly  accessible  No'th  American  continent? 

It  is  all  too  easy  now  for  the  slaughterer  to  get  to  his  work,  all  too  easy  for  him  to 


SAVAGE   VIEW-POINT  OF  THE  GUNNER  207 

transport  the  fruits  of  the  slaughter.  At  the  hands  of  the  ignorant,  the  unscrupulous 
and  the  unsparing,  our  game  has  steadily  disappeared  until  it  is  almost  gone.  We  have 
handled  it  in  a  wholly  greedy,  unscrupulous  and  selfish  fashion.  This  has  been  our 
policy  as  a  nation.  If  there  is  to  be  success  for  any  plan  to  remedy  this,  it  must  come 
from  a  few  large-minded  men,  able  to  think  and  plan,  and  able  to  do  more  than  that— 
to  follow  their  plans  with  deeds. 

I  have  seen  the  whole  story  of  modern  American  sportsmanship,  so  called.  It  has 
been  class  legislation  and  organized  selfishness — that  is  what  it  has  been,  and  notning 
else.  I  do  not  blame  country  legislators,  game  dealers,  farmers,  for  calling  the  srorts- 
men  of  America  selfish  and  thoughtless.  I  do  not  blame  them  for  saying  that  the 
so-called  protective  measures  advanced  by  sportsmen  have  been  selfish  measures,  and 
looking  to  destruction  rather  than  to  protection.  At  least  that  has  been  their  actual 
result.  I  have  no  more  reverence  for  a  sportsman  than  for  anyone  else,  and  no  reverence 
for  him  at  all  because  he  is  or  calls  himself  a  sportsman.  He  has  got  to  be  a  man.  He 
has  got  to  be  a  citizen. 

I  have  seen  millions  of  acres  of  breeding  and  feeding  grounds  pass  under  the  drain 
and  under  the  plow  in  my  own  time,  so  that  the  passing  whispc"  of  the  wild  fowl's  wing 
has  been  forgotten  there  now  for  many  years.  I  have  seen  a  half  dozen  species  of  fine 
game  birds  become  extinct  in  my  own  time  and  lost  forever  to  the  American  people. 

And  j^ou  and  I  have  seen  one  protective  society  after  another,  languidly  organised, 
paying  in  a  languid  dollar  or  so  per  capita  each  yea^,  and  so  swiftly  passing,  also  to  be 
forgotten.  We  have  seen  one  code  and  the  other  of  conflicting  and  wholly  selfish  game 
laws  passed,  and  seen  them  mocked  at  and  forgotten,  seen  them  all  fail,  as  we  all  know. 

We  have  seen  even  the  nation's  power — under  that  Ark  of  the  Covenant  known 
as  the  Interstate  Commerce  Act — fail  to  stop  wholly  the  lessening  of  our  wild  game, 
so  rapidly  disappearing  for  so  many  reasons. 

We  have  seen  both  selfish  and  unselfish  sportsmen's  journals  attempt  to  solve 
this  problem  and  fail  to  do  so.  Some  of  them  were  great  and  broad-minded  journals. 
Their  record  has  not  been  one  of  disgrace,  although  it  has  been  one  of  defeat;  for  some 
of  them  really  desired  success  more  than  they  desired  dividends.  These,  all  of  them, 
bore  their  share  of  a  great  experiment,  an  experiment  in  a  new  land,  under  a  new  theory 
of  government,  a  theoi-y  which  says  a  man  should  be  able  to  restrain  himself,  and  to 
govern  himself.  Only  by  following  their  theory  through  to  the  end  of  that  experiment 
could  they  know  that  it  was  to  fail  in  one  of  its  most  vitally  interesting  and  vitally 
important  phases. 

But  now,  as  we  know,  all  of  these  agencies,  selfish  or  unselfish,  have  failed  to  effect 
the  salvation  of  American  wild  game.  Not  by  any  scheme,  device,  or  theory,  not  by 
any  panacea  can  the  old  days  of  America  be  brought  back  to  us. 

Mr.  Hough's  views  are  entitled  to  respectful  consideration;  but  on 
one  vital  point  I  do  not  follow  him. 

I  believe  most  sincerely — in  fact,  /  know, — that  it  is  possible  to  make 
a  few  new  laws  which,  in  addition  to  the  many,  many  good  protective 
laws  we  already  have,  will  bring  back  the  game,  just  as  fast  and  as  far  as 
man's  settlements,  towns,  railroads,  mines  and  schemes  in  general  ever 
can  permit  it  to  come  back. 

If  the  American  People  as  a  whole  elect  that  our  wild  life  shall  be 
saved,  and  to  a  reasonable  extent  brought  back,  then  by  the  Eternal  it 
will  be  saved  and  brought  back!  The  road  lies  straight  before  us,  and 
the  going  is  easy — if  the  Mass  makes  up  its  mind  to  act.  But  on  one 
vital  point  Mr.  Hough  is  right.  The  sportsman  alone  never  will  save  the 
game!    The  people  who  do  not  kill  must  act,  independently. 


PART  IL— PRESERVATION 

CHAPTER  XXII 
OUR  ANNUAL  LOSSES  BY  INSECTS 

"You  take  my  life  when  you  do  take  the  means  whereby  I  Uve." 

"In  no  country  in  the  world,"  says  Mr.  C.  L.  Marlatt,  of  the  U.  S. 
Department  of  Agriculture,  "do  insects  impose  a  heavier  tax  on  farm 
products  than  in  the  United  States."  These  attacks  are  based  upon  an 
enormous  and  varied  annual  output  of  cereals  and  fruits,  and  a  great 
variety  and  number  of  trees.  For  every  vegetable-eating  insect,  native 
and  foreign,  we  seem  to  have  crops,  trees  and  plant  food  galore ;  and  their 
ravages  rob  the  market-basket  and  the  dinner-pail.  In  1912  there 
were  riots  in  the  streets  of  New  York  over  the  high  cost  of  food. 

In  1903,  this  state  of  fact  was  made  the  subject  of  a  special  inquiry 
\  by  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  in  the  "Yearbook"  for  1904,  the 
reader  will  find,  on  page  461,  an  article  entitled,  "The  Annual  Loss  Occa- 
sioned by  Destructive  Insects  in  the  United  States."  The  article  is  not 
of  the  sensational  type,  it  was  not  written  in  an  alarmist  spirit,  but  from 
beginning  to  end  it  is  a  calm,  cold-blooded  analysis  of  existing  facts,  and 
the  conclusions  that  fairly  may  be  drawn  from  them.  The  opinions  of 
several  experts  have  been  considered  and  quoted,  and  often  their  inde- 
pendent figures  are  stated. 

With  the  disappearance  of  our  birds  generally,  and  especially  the 
slaughter  of  song  and  other  insect-eating  birds  both  in  the  South  and 
North,  the  destruction  of  the  national  wealth  by  insects  forges  to  the 
front  as  a  subject  of  vital  importance.  The  logic  of  the  situation  is 
so  simple  a  child  can  see  it.  Short  crops  mean  higher  prices.  If  ten 
per  cent  of  our  vegetable  food  supply  is  destroyed  by  insects,  as  certain 
as  fate  we  will  feel  it  in  the  increased  cost  of  living. 

I  would  like  to  place  Mr.  Marlatt's  report  in  the  hands  of  every  man, 
boy  and  school-teacher  in  America;  but  I  have  not  at  my  disposal  the 
means  to  accomplish  such  a  task.  I  cannot  even  print  it  here  in  full,  but 
the  vital  facts  can  be  stated,  briefly  and  in  plain  figures. 

Crops  and  Insects. 

Corn. — The  principal  insect  enemies  of  corn  are  the  chinch  bug, 
corn-root  worm  (Diabrotica  longicornis) ,  bill  bug,  wire  worm,  boll-worm 


Ol'R  ANNUAL  LOSSES  BY  INSECTS 


209 


THE  CUT-WORM,  (Peridrotna  sancia) 
Very  Destructive  to  Crops 


or  ear-wurm,  cut-worm,  army  worm,  stalk  worm,  grasshopper,  and  plant 
lice,  in  all  a  total  of  about  fifty  important  species !  Several  of  these  pests 
work  secretly.  At  husking  time  the  wretched  ear-worm  that  ruins  the 
terminal  quarter  or  fifth  of  an  immense  number  of  ears,  is  painfully  in 
evidence.  The  root-worms  work  insidiously,  and  the  moles  and  shrews 
are  supposed  to  attack  them  and  destroy  them.  The  corn-root  worm  is 
charged  with  causing  an  annual  loss  of  two  per  cent  of  the  corn  crop,  or 
$20,000,000;  the  chinch  bug  another  two  per  cent;  the  boll  or  ear-worm 
two  per  cent  more.  The  remaining  insect  pests  are  charged  with  two 
per  cent,  which  makes  eight  per  cent  in  all,  or  a  total  of  $80,000,000 
lost  each  year  to  the  American  farmer  through  the  ravages  of  insects. 
This  is  not  evenly  distributed,  but  some  areas  suffer  more  than  others. 

Wheat. — Of  all  our  cereal  crops,  wheat  is  the  one  that  suffers  most 
from  insects.     There  are  three  insects  that  cause  to  the  wheat  industry 


210  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

an  annual  loss  of  about  ten  per  cent.  The  chinch  bug  is  the  worst,  and  it  is 
charged  with  five  per  cent  ($20,000,000)  of  the  total  loss.  The  Hessian 
fly  conies  next  in  order,  and  occasionally  rolls  up  enormous  losses.  In 
the  year  1900,  that  insect  caused  to  Indiana  and  Ohio  alone  the  loss  of 
2,577,000  acres  of  wheat,  and  the  total  cost  to  us  of  that  insect  in  that 
year  "undoubtedly  approached  $100,000,000."  Did  that  affect  the  price 
of  wheat  or  not?  If  not,  then  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  "law  of  supply 
and  demand." 

Wheat  plant-lice  form  collectively  the  third  insect  pest  destructive  to 
wheat,  of  which  it  is  reported  that  "the  annual  loss  occasioned  by  wheat 
plant-lice  probably  does  not  fall  short  of  two  or  three  per  cent  of  the  crop. ' ' 

Hay  and  Forage  Crops. — These  are  attacked  by  locusts,  grasshop- 
pers, army  worms,  cut-worms,  web  worms,  small  grass  worms  and  leaf 
hoppers.  Some  of  these  pests  are  so  small  and  work  so  insidiously  that 
even  the  farmer  is  prone  to  overlook  their  existence.  "A  ten  per  cent 
shrinkage  from  these  and  other  pests  in  grasses  and  forage  plants  is  a 
minimum  estimate." 

Cotton. — The  great  enemies  of  the  cotton-planter  are  the  cotton 
boll  weevil,  the  bollworm  and  the  leaf  worm;  but  other  insects  inflict 
serious  damage.  In  1904  the  loss  occasioned  by  the  boll  weevil,  chiefly 
in  Texas,  was  conservatively  estimated  by  an  expert,  Mr.  W.  D.  Hunter, 
at  $20,000,000.  The  boll  worm  of  the  southwestern  cotton  states  has 
sometimes  caused  an  annual  loss  of  $12,000,000,  or  four  per  cent  of  the 
crops  in  the  states  affected.  Before  the  use  of  arsenical  poisons,  the 
leaf  worm  caused  an  annual  loss  of  from  twenty  to  thirty  million  dollars ; 
but  of  late  years  that  total  has  been  greatly  reduced. 

Fruits. — The  insects  that  reduce  our  annual  fruit  crop  attack  every 
portion  of  the  tree  and  its  product.  The  woolly  aphis  attacks  the  roots 
of  the  fruit  tree,  the  trunk  and  limbs  are  preyed  upon  by  millions  of  scale 
insects  and  borers,  the  leaves  are  devastated  by  the  all-devouring  leaf 
worms,  canker  worms  and  tent  caterpillars,  while  the  fruit  itself  is  at- 
tacked by  the  codling  moth,  curculio  and  apple  maggot.  To  destroy 
fruit  is  to  take  money  out  of  the  farmer's  pocket,  and  to  attack  and 
injure  the  tree  is  like  undermining  his  house  itself.  By  an  annual  ex- 
penditure of  about  $8,250,000  in  cash  for  spraying  apple  trees,  the 
destructiveness  of  the  codling  moth  and  curculio  have  been  greatly  re- 
duced, but  that  money  is  itself  a  cash  loss.  Add  to  this  the  $12,000,000 
of  actual  shrinkage  in  the  apple  crop,  and  the  total  annual  loss  to  our 
apple-growers  due  to  the  codling  moth  and  curculio  is  about  $20,000,000. 
In  the  high  price  of  apples,  a  part  of  this  loss  falls  upon  the  consumer. 

In  1889  Professor  Forbes  calculated  that  the  annual  loss  to  the  fruit- 
growers of  Illinois  from  insect  ravages  was  $2,375,000.  In  1892,  insects 
caused  to  Nebraska  apple-growers  a  loss  computed  at  $2,000,000  and,  in 
1897,  New  York  farmers  lost  $2,500,000  from  that  cause.  "In  many 
sections  of  the  Pacific  Northwest  the  loss  was  from  fifty  to  seventy-five 
per  cent."  (Yearbook,  page  470.) 

Forests. — "The  annual  losses  occasioned  by  insect  jjests  to  forests 


OUR   ANNUAL    LOSSES    BY  INSECTS 


211 


PUPA 

(Chrysalis; 


THE  GYPSY  MOTH,  (Fortheria  dispur) 
Very  Destructive  to  the  Finest  Shade  Trees 

and  forest  products  (in  the  United  States)  have  been  estimated  by  Dr. 
A.  D.  Hopkins,  special  agent  in  charge  of  forest  insect  investigations,  at 
not  less  than  $100,000,000.  *  *  *  j^  covers  both  the  loss  from  insect 
damages  to  standing  timber,  and  to  the  crude  and  manufactured  forest 
products.  The  annual  loss  to  growing  timber  is  conservativelv  placed 
at  $70,000,000." 


212 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


There  are  other  insect  damages  that  we  will  not  pause  to  enumerate 
here.  They  relate  to  cattle,  horses,  sheep  and  stored  grain  products  of 
many  kinds.  Even  cured  tobacco  has  its  pest,  a  minute  insect  known 
as  the  cigarette  beetle,  now  widespread  in  America  and  "frequently  the 
cause  of  very  heavy  losses." 

The  millions  of  the  insect  world  are  upon  us.  Their  cost  to  us  has 
been  summed  up  by  Mr.  Marlatt  in  the  table  that  appears  below. 

Annual  Values   of   Farm   Products,   and   Losses   Chargeable 

TO  Insect  Pests. 


official  Report  in  the  Yearbook  of  the  Department 

of  Agriculture, 

1904. 

PRODUCT 

value 

percentage 

OF   LOSS 

amount   OF 
LOSS 

Cereals 

#2,000,000,000 
530,000,000 
600,000,000 

53,000,000 
265,000,000 

50,000,000 
135,000,000 
110,000,000 

58,000,000 

10 
10 
10 
10 
20 
10 
20 
10 
10 

10 

■S200,000  000 

Hay 

53,000,000 

Cotton 

60.000,000 

Tobacco 

5,300,000 

Truck  Crops 

53,000,000 

Sugars 

5,000,000 

Fruits 

27,000,000 

Farm  Forests 

11,000,000 

Miscellaneous  Crops 

5,800,000 

Total 

#3,801,000,000 
1,750,000,000 

#420,100,000 

175,000,000 
100,000,000 

Animal  Products 

Natural  Forests  and  Forest  Products.  .  . 

Products  in  Storage 

100,000  000 

Grand  Total 

#5,551,000,000 

#795,100  000 

The  millions  of  the  insect  world  are  upon  us.  The  birds  fight  them 
for  us,  and  when  the  birds  are  numerous  and  have  nestlings  to  feed,  the 
number  of  insects  they  consume  is  enormous.  They  require  absolutely 
nothing  at  our  hands  save  the  privilege  of  being  let  alone  while  they  work 
for  us!  In  fighting  the  insects,  our  only  allies  in  nature  are  the  song- 
birds, woodpeckers,  shore-birds,  swallows  and  martins,  certain  hawks, 
moles,  shrews,  bats,  and  a  few  other  living  creatures.  All  these  wage 
war  at  their  own  expense.  The  farmers  might  just  as  well  lose  $8,250,000 
through  a  short  apple  crop  as  to  pay  out  that  sum  in  labor  and  materials 
in  spraying  operations.  And  yet,  fools  that  we  are,  we  go  on  slaughtering 
our  friends,  and  allowing  others  to  slaughter  them,  under  the  same  brand 
of  fatuous  folly  that  leads  the  people  of  Italy  to  build  anew  on  the  smok- 
ing sides  of  Vesuvius,  after  a  dozen  generations  have  been  swept  away 
by  fire  and  ashes. 

In  the  next  chapter  we  will  consider  the  work  of  our  friends,  The  Birds. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 
THE   ECONOMIC   VALUE  OF  BIRDS 

To-day,  from  Halifax  to  Los  Angeles,  and  from  Key  West  to  Victoria, 
a  deadly  contest  is  being  waged.  The  fruit-growers,  farmers,  forest  owners 
and  "park  people"  are  engaged  in  a  struggle  with  the  insect  hordes  for 
the  possession  of  the  trees,  shrubs  and  crops.  Go  out  into  the  open,  with 
your  eyes  open,  and  you  will  see  it  for  yourself.  Millions  of  dollars  are 
being  expended  in  it.  Look  at  this  exhibit  of  what  is  going  on  around 
me,  at  this  very  moment, — July  19,  1912: 

The  bag  insects,  in  thousands,  are  devouring  the  leaves  of  locust  and 
maple  trees. 

The  elm  beetles  are  trying  to  devour  the  elms;  and  spraying  is  in 
progress. 

The  hickory-bark  borers  are  slaughtering  the  hickories;  and  even 
some  park  people  are  neglecting  to  take  the  measures  necessary  to  stop  it ! 

The  tent  caterpillars  are  being  burned. 

The  aphis  (scale  insects)  are  devouring  the  tops  of  the  white  potatoes 
in  the  New  York  University  school  garden,  just  as  the  potato  beetle  does. 

The  codling  moth  larvae  are  already  at  work  on  the  apples. 

The  leaves  affected  by  the  witch  hazel  gall  fly  are  being  cut  ofi"  and 
burned. 

These  are  merely  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  insect  pests  that  I  now 
see  daily.     I  am  not  counting  those  of  second  or  third-rate  importance. 

Some  of  these  hordes  are  being  fought  with  poisonous  sprays,  some 
are  being  killed  by  hand,  and  some  are  being  ignored. 

In  view  of  the  known  value  of  the  remaining  trees  of  our  country,  each 
woodpecker  in  the  United  States  is  worth  twenty  dollars  in  cash.  Each 
nuthatch,  creeper  and  chickadee  is  worth  from  five  to  ten  dollars,  accord- 
ing to  local  circumstances.  You  might  just  as  well  cut  down  four  twenty- 
inch  trees  and  let  them  lie  and  decay,  as  to  permit  one  woodpecker 
to  be  killed  and  eaten  by  an  Italian  in  the  North,  or  a  negro  in  the  South. 
The  downy  woodpecker  is  the  relentless  enemy  of  the  codling  moth,  an 
insect  that  annually  inflicts  upon  our  apple  crop  damages  estimated  by 
the  experts  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture  at  twelve  million 
dollars ! 

Now,  is  a  federal  strong-arm  migratory  bird  law  needed  for  such 
birds  or  not  ?    Let  the  owners  of  orchards  and  forests  make  answer. 

The  Case  of  the  Codling  Moth  and  Curculio. — The  codling 
moth  and  curculio  are  twin  terrors  to  apple-growers,  partly  because  of 


{/ 


214 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


their  deadly  destmctiveness, 
and  partly  because  man  is 
so  weak  in  resisting  them. 
The  annual  cost  of  the  fight 
made  against  them,  in  sprays 
and  labor  and  apparatus,  has- 
been  estimated  at  $8,250,000. 
And  what  do  the  birds  do  to 
the  codling  moth,  ■ —  when 
there  are  any  birds  left  alive 
to  operate?  The  testimony 
)%.  comes    from    all    over    the 

United  States,  and  it  is  worth 
while  to  cite  it  briefly  as  a 
fair  sample  of  the  work  of 
the  birds  upon  this  particu- 
larly deadly  pest.  These 
facts  and  quotations  are  from 
the  "Yearbook  of  the  De- 
]3artment  of  Agriculture," 
for  1911. 

The  Downy  Woodpecker 
is  the  champion  tree-protec- 
tor, and  also  one  of  the 
greatest  enemies  of  the  cod- 
ling moth.  When  man  is 
quite  unable  to  find  the  hid- 
den larvae.  Downy  locates 
it  every  time,  and  digs  it 
out.  It  extracts  worms  from 
young  apples  so  skillfully 
that  often  the  fruit  is  not  permanently  injured.  Mr.  F.  M.  Webster  re- 
ports that  the  labors  of  this  bird  "afford  actual  and  immediate  relief  to 
the  infected  fruit."  Testimony  in  favor  of  the  downy  woodpecker  has 
come  from  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Texas  and  California,  "and  no  fewer 
than  twenty  larvae  have  been  taken  from  a  single  stomach." 

Take  the  Red-Shafted  Flicker  vs.  the  codling  moth.  Mr.  A.  P.  Martin, 
of  Petaluma,  Cal.,  states  that  during  the  early  spring  months  (of  1890) 
they  were  seen  by  hundreds  in  his  orchard,  industriously  examining  the 
trunks  and  larger  limbs  of  the  fruit  trees ;  and  he  also  found  great  num- 
bers of  them  around  sheds  where  he  stored  his  winter  apples  and  pears. 
As  the  result  of  several  hours'  search,  Mr.  Martin  found  only  one  worm, 
and  this  one  escaped  only  by  accident,  for  several  of  the  birds  had  been 
within  a  quarter  of  an  inch  of  it.  "So  eager  are  woodpeckers  in  search 
of  codling  moths  that  they  have  often  been  known  to  riddle  the  shingle 
traps  and  paper  bands  which  are  placed  to  attract  the  larvae  about  to 
spin  cocoons. 


DOWNY   WOODPECKER 


ECONOMIC  VALUE   OF   BIRDS  215 

Behold  the  array  of  birds  that  devour  the  larvae  of  the  codling  moth 
to  an  important  extent. 

Birds  that  Devour  the  Codling  Moth 

Downy  Woodpecker  {Dryobates  pubescens) . 
Hairy  Woodpecker  {Dryobates  villosus). 
Texan  Woodpecker  {Dryobates  scalaris  bairdi). 
Red-Headed  Woodpecker  (Melaverpes  erythrocephalus). 
Red-Shafted  Flicker  {Colaptes  cafer  coUaris). 
Pileated  Woodpecker  (Phloeotomus  pileatus). 
Kingbird  {Tyrraniis  tyrranns). 

Western  Yellow- Bellied  Flycatcher  {Empidonax  difficilis). 
Blue  Jay  {Cyanocitta  cristata). 
California  Jay  {A  phelocoma  calif  arnica). 
Magpie  {Pica  pica  httdsonia). 
Crow  Blackbird  {Qiiiscalns  quiscula). 
Brewer  Blackbird  {Enphagtis  cyanocephalus). 
Bullock  Oriole  {Icterus  bidlocki). 
English  Sparrow  {Passer  domesticus). 
Chipping  Sparrow  {Spizella  passerina). 
California  Towhee  {Pipilo  crissalis). 
Cardinal  {Cardinalis  cardinalis). 
Black  Headed  Grosbeak  {Zamelodia  melanocephaJa). 
Lazuli  Bunting  {Passerina  cyanea). 
Barn  Swallow  {Ilirundo  erythrogastra). 
Western  Warbling  Vireo  {Vireosylva  gilva  s-ixuinsoni) . 
vSummer,  or  Yellow  Warbler  {Dendroica  aestiva). 
Lutescent  Warbler  {Vermivora  celata  lutescens). 
Brown  Creeper  {Certhia  familiaris  americana). 
White-Breasted  Nuthatch  {Sifta  carolinensis). 
Black-Capped  Chickadee  {Penthestes  atricapilliis). 
Plain  Titmouse  {Baeolophus  inornatus). 
,  CavoVma.  Chicl^adee  {Pe^ithestes  carolinensis). 

Mountain  Chickadee  {Penthestes  gambeli). 
California  Bush  Tit   [Psaltriparns  minimus  calif  amicus). 
Ruby-Crowned  Kinglet  {Regulus  calendula). 
Robin  {Planesticus  migratorius) , 
Bluebird  {Sialia  sialis). 

In  all,  says  Mr.  W.  L.  AIcAtee,  thirty-six  species  of  birds  of  thirteen 
families  help  man  in  his  irrepressible  conflict  against  his  deadly  enemy, 
the  codling  moth.  "In  some  places  they  destroy  from  sixty-six  to  eighty- 
five  per  cent  of  the  hibernating  larvae." 

Now,  are  the  farmers  of  this  country  content  to  let  the  Italians  of  the 
North,  and  the  negroes  of  the  South,  shoot  those  birds  for  food,  and 
devour  them?  What  is  the  great  American  farmer  going  to  do  about 
this  matter?  What  he  should  do  is  to  write  and  urge  his  members  of 
Congress  to  work  for  and  vote  for  the  federal  migratory  bird  bill. 

The  Cotton  Boll  Weevil. — Let  us  take  one  other  concrete  case. 
The  cotton  boll  weevil  invaded  the  United  States  from  Mexico  in  1894. 
Ten  years  later  it  was  costing  the  cotton  planters  an  annual  loss  estimated 
at  fifteen  million  dollars  per  year.  Later  on  that  loss  was  estimated  at 
twenty  million  dollars.  The  cotton  boll  weevil  strikes  at  the  heart  of 
the  industry  by  destroying  the  boll  of  the  cotton  plant.     While  the  total 


216  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

loss  never  can  be  definitely  ascertained,  we  know  that  it  has  amounted 
to  many  millions  of  dollars.  The  figure  given  above  has  been  widely 
quoted,  and  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  never  disputed. 

Fortunately  we  have  at  hand  a  government  publication  on  this  sub- 
ject which  gives  some  pertinent  facts  regarding  the  bird  enemies  of  the 
cotton  boll  weevil.  It  is  Circular  No.  57  of  the  Biological  Survey,  De- 
partment of  Agriculttire.  Any  one  can  obtain  it  by  addressing  that 
Department.  I  quote  the  most  important  portions  of  this  valuable 
document : 

Birds  Useful  in  the  War  Against  the  Cotton  Boll  Weevil. 
By  H.  W.  Henshaw,  Chief  of  the  Biological  Survey. 

The  main  purpose  of  this  circular  is  to  direct  the  attention  of  cotton 
growers  and  others  in  the  cotton  growing  states  to  the  importance  of 
birds  in  the  boll  weevil  war,  to  emphasize  the  need  of  protection  for 
them,  and  to  suggest  means  to  increase  the  numbers  and  extend  the 
range  of  certain  of  the  more  important  kinds. 

Investigations  by  the  Biological  Survey  show  that  thirty-eight  species 
of  birds  eat  boll  weevils.  While  some  eat  them  only  sparingly  others 
eat  them  freely,  and  no  fewer  than  forty-seven  adult  weevils  have  been 
found  in  the  stomach  of  a  single  cliff  swallow.  Of  the  birds  known  at 
the  present  time  to  feed  on  the  weevil,  among  the  most  important  are 
the  orioles,  nighthawks,  and,  foremost  of  all,  the  swallows  (including  the 
purple  martin). 

Orioles. — Six  kinds  of  orioles  live  in  Texas,  though  but  two  inhabit 
the  southern  states  generally.  Orioles  are  among  the  few  birds  that 
evince  a  decided  preference  for  weevils,  and  as  they  persistently  hunt 
for  the  insects  on  the  bolls,  they  fill  a  place  occupied  by  no  other  birds. 
They  are  protected  by  law  in  nearly  every  state  in  the  Union,  but  their 
bright  plumage  renders  them  among  the  most  salable  of  birds  for  millinery 
purposes,  and  despite  protective  laws,  considerable  numbers  are  still 
killed  for  the  hat  trade.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  their 
importance  as  insect  eaters  everywhere  demands  their  protection,  but 
more  especially  in  the  cotton  belt. 

NiGHTHAWK. — The  nighthawk,  or  bull-bat,  also  renders  important 
service  in  the  destruction  of  weevils,  and  catches  them  on  the  wing  in 
considerable  numbers,  especially  during  its  migration.  Unfortunately, 
the  nighthawk  is  eaten  for  food  in  some  sections  of  the  South,  and  considerable 
numbers  are  shot  for  this  purpose.  The  bird's  value  for  food,  however,  is 
infinitesimal  as  compared  with  the  service  it  renders  the  cotton  grower 
and  other  agriculturists,  and  every  effort  should  be  made  to  spread 
broadcast  a  knowledge  of  its  usefulness  as  a  weevil  destroyer,  with  a  view 
to  its  complete  protection. 

Swallows. — Of  all  the  birds  now  known  to  destroy  weevils,  swallows 
are  the  most  important.  Six  species  occur  in  Texas  and  the  southern 
states.    The  martin,  the  barn  swallow,  the  bank  swallow,  the  roughwing. 


ECONOMIC  VALUE   OF  BIRDS 


217 


and  the  cliff  swallow  breed 
locally  in  Texas,  and  all  of 
them,  except  the  cliff  swal- 
low, breed  in  the  other 
cotton  states.  The  white- 
bellied,  or  tree  swallow, 
nests  only  in  the  North, 
and  by  far  the  greater  num- 
ber of  cliff  swallows  nest 
in  the  North  and  West. 

As  showing  how  a  col- 
ony of  martins  thrives 
when  provided  with  suffi- 
cient room  to  multiply,  an 
experiment  by  Mr.  J.  War- 
ren Jacobs,  of  Waynes- 
burg,  Pa.,  may  be  cited. 
The  first  year  five  pairs 
were  induced  to  occupy  the 
single  box  provided,  and 
raised  eleven  young.  The 
fourth  year  three  large 
boxes,  divided  into  ninety- 
nine  rooms,  contained  fifty- 
three  pairs,  and  they  raised 
about  175  young.  The 
colony  was  thus  nearly 
three  hundred  strong  at  the 
close  of  the  fourth  s'sason. 
The  effect  of  this  number 
of  hungry  martins  on  the 
insects  infesting  the  neigh- 
borhood may  be  imagined. 
From  the  standpoint  of 
the  farmer  and  the  cotton 
grower,  swallows  are  among  the  most  useful  birds.  Especially  designed 
by  nature  to  capture  insects  in  midair,  their  powers  of  flight  and  endurance 
are  unexcelled,  and  in  their  own  field  they  have  no  competitors.  Their 
peculiar  value  to  the  cotton  grower  consists  in  the  fact  that,  like  the  night- 
hawk,  they  capture  boll  weevils  when  flying  over  the  fields,  which  no  other 
birds  do.  Flycatchers  snap  up  the  weevils  near  trees  and  shrubbery. 
Wrens  hunt  them  out  when  concealed  under  bark  or  rubbish.  Blackbirds 
catch  them  on  the  ground,  as  do  the  killdeer,  titlark,  meadow  lark,  and 
others;  while  orioles  hunt  for  them  on  the  bolls.  But  it  is  the  peculiar 
function  of  swallows  to  catch  the  weevils  as  they  are  making  long  flights, 
leaving  the  cotton  fields  in  search  of  hiding  places  in  which  to  winter  or 
entering  them  to  continue  their  work  of  devastation. 

Means  have  been  taken  to  inform  residents  of  the  northern  states  of 


From  the  "Ai 


THE  BALTIMORE  ORIOLE 
The  Deadly  Enemy  of  the  Cotton-Boll  Weevil 


218 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 


the  value  of  the  swallow 
tribe  to  agriculturists  gener- 
ally, and  particularly  to  cot- 
ton planters,  in  the  belief 
that  the  number  of  swallows 
breeding  in  the  North  can 
be  substantially  increased. 
The  cooperation  of  the 
northern  states  is  impor- 
tant, since  birds  bred  in  the 
North  migrate  directly 
through  the  southern  states 
in  the  fall  on  their  way  to 
the  distant  tropics,  and  also 
in  the  spring  on  their  return. 
Important  as  it  is  to  in- 
crease the  number  of  north- 
ern breeding  swallows,  it  is 
still  more  important  to  in- 
crease the  number  nesting 
in  the  South  and  to  induce 

the  birds  there  to  extend  their  range  over  as  much  of  the  cotton  area  as 
possible.  Nesting  birds  spend  much  more  time  in  the  South  than  mi- 
grants, and  during  the  weeks  when  the  old  birds  are  feeding  young  they 
are  almost  incessantly  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  insects. 

It  is  not,  of  course,  claimed  that  birds  alone  can  stay  the  ravages  of 
the  cotton  boll  weevil  in  Texas,  but  they  materially  aid  in  checking  the 
advance  of  the  pest  into  the  other  cotton  states.  Important  auxiliaries 
in  destroying  these  insects,  birds  aid  in  reducing  their  numbers  within 
safe  limits,  and  once  within  safe  limits  in  keeping  them  there.  Hence  it 
is  for  the  interests  of  the  cotton  states  that  special  efforts  be  made  to 
protect  and  care  for  the  weevil-eating  species,  and  to  increase  their  num- 
bers in  every  way  possible. — (End  cf  the  circular.) 


THE  NIGHTHAWK 

A  Goatsucker,  not  a  Song-bird;  but  it  Feeds 
Exclusively  Upon  Insects 


Condensed  Notes  on  the  Food  Habits  of  Certain 
North  American  Birds. 


Millions  of  Americans  and  near- Americans,  both  old  and  young,  now 
need  to  be  shown  the  actual  figures  that  represent  the  value  of  our  birds 
as  destroyers  of  the  insects,  weeds  and  the  small  rodents  that  are  swarm- 
ing to  overrun  and  devour  our  fields,  orchards  and  forests.  Will  our 
people  never  learn  that  in  fighting  pests  the  birds  are  worth  ten  times 
more  to  men  than  all  the  poisons,  sprays  and  traps  that  ever  were  in- 
vented or  used  ? 

We  cannot  spray  our  forests;  and  if  the  wild  birds  do  not  protect 
them  from  insects,  nothing  will!  If  you  will  watch  a  warbler  collecting 
the  insects  out  of  the  top  of  a  seventy-foot  forest  oak,  busy  as  a  bee 


ECONOMIC  VALUE    OF  BIRDS 


219 


hour  after  hour,  it  will  con- 
vince you  that  the  birds  do 
for  the  forests  that  which 
man  with  all  his  resources 
cannot  accomplish.  You 
will  then  realize  that  to 
this  country  every  wood- 
pecker, chickadee,  tit- 
mouse, creeper  and  warbler 
is  easily  worth  its  weight  in 
gold.  The  killing  of  any 
member  of  those  groups  of 
birds  should  be  punished 
by  a  fine  of  twenty-five 
dollars. 

The  Bob-White. — And 

take  the  Bob  White  Qtiail, 
for  example,  and  the  weeds 
of  the  farm.  To  kill  weeds 
costs  money — hard  cash 
that  the  farmer  earns  by 
toil.  Does  the  farmer  put 
forth  strenuous  efforts  to 
protect  the  bird  of  all  birds 
that  docs  most  to  help  him 
keep  down  the  weeds  ?  Far  from  it !  All  that  the  average  farmer  thinks 
^bout  the  quail  is  of  killing  it,  for  a  few  ounces  of  meat  on  the  table. 

It  is  fairly  beyond  question  that  of  all  birds  that  influence  the  fortunes 
of  the  farmers  and  fruit-growers  of  North  America,  the  common  quail,  or 
bob  white,  is  one  of  the  most  valuable.  It  stays  on  the  farm  all  the  year 
round.  When  insects  are  most  numerous  and  busy.  Bob  Wliite  devotes 
to  them  his  entire  time.  He  cheerfully  fights  them,  from  sixteen  to 
eighteen  hours  per  day.  When  the  insects  are  gone,  he  turns  his  atten- 
tion to  the  weeds  that  are  striving  to  seed  down  the  fields  for  another 
year.  Occasionally  he  gets  a  few  grains  of  wheat  that  have  been  left  on 
the  ground  by  the  reapers;  but  he  does  vo  damage.  In  California,  M^here 
the  valley  quail  once  were  very  numerous,  they  sometimes  consumed 
altogether  too  much  wheat  for  the  good  of  the  farmers;  but  outside  of 
California  I  believe  such  occurrences  are  unknown. 

Let  us  glance  over  the  bob  white's  bill  of  fare: 

Weed  Seeds. — One  hundred  and  twent}'-ninc  different  weeds  have 
been  found  to  contribute  to  the  quail's  bill  of  fare.  Crops  and  stomachs 
have  been  found  crowded  with  rag-weed  seeds,  to  the  number  of  one 
thousand,  while  others  had  eaten  as  many  seeds  of  crab-grass.  A  bird 
shot  at  Pine  Brook,  N.  J.,  in  October,  1902,  had  eaten  five  thousand  seeds 
of  green  fox-tail  grass,  and  one  killed  on  Christmas  Day  at  Kinsale,  Va., 
had  takenaboutten  thousand  seeds  of  the  pig-weed.      (Elizabeth  A.  Reed.) 


THE  PURPLE  MARTIN 

A  Representative  of  the  Swallow  Family.  A  Gruat  Insect-eater; 
one  of  the  Most  Valuable  of  all  Birds  to  the  Southern  Cotton 
planter,  and  Northern  farmer.  Shot  for  "Food"  in  the  South. 
Driven  out  of  the  North  by  the  English  Sparrow  Pest. 


220  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

In  Bulletin  No.  21,  Biological  Survey,  it  is  calculated  that  if  in  Virginia 
and  North  Carolina  there  are  four  bob  whites  to  every  square  mile,  and 
each  bird  consumes  one  ounce  of  seed  per  day,  the  total  destruction  to 
weed  seeds  from  September  1st  to  April  80th  in  those  states  alone  will 
be  1,341  tons. 

In  1910  Mrs.  Margaret  Morse  Nice,  of  Clark  University,  Worcester, 
Mass.,  finished  and  contributed  to  the  Journal  of  Economic  Entomology 
(Vol.  III.,  No.  3)  a  masterful  investigation  of  "The  Food  of  the  Bob- 
White."  It  should  be  in  every  library  in  this  land.  Mrs.  Nice  publishes 
the  entire  list  of  129  species  of  weed  seeds  consumed  by  the  quail, — and 
it  looks  like  a  rogue's  gallery.  Here  is  an  astounding  record,  which 
proves  once  more  that  truth  is  stranger  than  fiction : 

Number  of  Seeds  Eaten  by  a  Bob-White  in  One  Day 

Barnyard  grass 2,500  Milkweed 770 

Beggar  ticks 1,400  Peppergrass 2,400 

Black  mustard 2,500  Pigweed 12,000 

Burdock 600  Plantain 12,500 

Crab  grass 2,000  Rabbitsfoot  clover 30,000 

Curled  dock 4,175  Round-headed  bush  clover.  .  .    1,800 

Dodder 1,560  Smartweed 2,250 

Evening  primrose 10,000  White  vervain 18,750 

Lamb's  quarter 15,000  Water  smartweed 2,000 

Notably  Bad  Insects  Eaten  by  the  Bob-White 

(Prof.  Judd  and  Mrs.  Nice.) 

Colorado  potato  beetle  Clover  leaf  beetle 

Cucumber  beetle  Cotton  boll  weevil 

Chinch  bug  Cotton  boll  worm 

Bean-leaf  beetle  Striped  garden  caterpillar 

Wireworm  Cutworms 

May  beetle  Grasshoppers 

Corn  billbug  Corn-louse  ants 

Imbricated-snout  beetle  «  Rocky  Mountain  locust 

Plant  lice  Codling  moth 

Cabbage  butterfly  Canker  worm 

Mosquito  Hessian  fly 

Squash  beetle  Stable  fly 

Summary  of  the  Quail's  Insect  Food 

Orthoptera — Grasshoppers  and  locusts 13  species. 

Hemiptera — Bugs 24       " 

Homoptera — Leaf  hoppers  and  plant  lice 6       " 

Lepidoptera — Moths,  caterpillars,  cut-worms,  etc 19       " 

Diptera — Flies 8 

Coleoptera — Beetles 61 

Hymenoptera — Ants,  wasps,  slugs 8 

Other  insects 6 

Total  145       " 


ECONOMIC  VALUE  OF  BIRDS 


221 


A  few  sample  meals  of 
insects. — The  following  are 
records  of  single  individual 
meals  of  the  bob  white : 

Of  grasshoppers,  84; 
chinch  bugs,  100;  squash 
bugs,  12;  army  worm,  12; 
cut-worm,  12;  mosquitoes, 
568  in  three  hours ;  cotton 
boll  weevil,  47;  flies,  1,350; 
rose  slugs,  1,286.  Miscel- 
laneous insects  consumed 
by  alaying hen  quail,  1,532, 
of  which  1,000  were  grass- 
hoppers; total  weigh  of 
the  lot,  24.6  grams. 

"F.  M.  Howard,  of 
Beeville,  Texas,  wrote  to 
the  U.S.  Bureau  of  Ento- 
mology,  that  the  bob  whites 
shot  in  his  vicinity  had 
their  crops  filled  with  the 
weevils.  Another  farmer 
reported  his  cotton  fields 
full  of  quail,  and  an  en- 
tire absence  of  weevils." 
Texas  and  Georgia  papers 
(please  copy.) 

And  yet,  because  of  its 
few  pitiful  ounces  of  flesh, 
two  million  gunners  and 
ten  thousand  lawmakers 
think  of  the  quail  only  as 
a  bird  that  can  be  shot  and 
eaten!  Throughout  a  great  portion  of  its  former  range,  including  New 
York  and  New  Jersey,  the  species  is  surely  and  certainly  on  the  verge 
of  total  extinction.  And  yet  sportsmen  gravely  discuss  the  "bag  limit," 
and  "enforcement  of  the  bag-limit  law"  as  a  means  of  bringing  back 
this  almost  vanished  species!  Such  folly  in  grown  men  is  very  trying. 
To  my  friend,  the  Epicure: — The  next  time  you  regale  a  good  appetite 
with  blue  points,  terrapin  stew,  filet  of  sole  and  saddle  of  mutton,  touched 
up  here  and  there  with  the  high  lights  of  rare  old  sherry,  rich  claret  and 
dry  monopole,  pause  as  the  dead  quail  is  laid  before  you,  on  a  funeral 
pyre  of  toast,  and  consider  this:  "Here  lies  the  charred  remains  of  the 
Farmer's  Ally  and  Friend,  poor  Bob  White.  In  life  he  devoured  145 
different  kinds  of  bad  insects,  and  the  seeds  of  129  anathema  weeds. 
For  the  smaller  pests  of  the  farm,  he  was  the  most  marvelous  engine  of 


THE  BOB-WHITE 

For  the  Smaller  Pests  of  the  Farm,  This  Bird  is  the  Most 

Marvelous  Engine  of  Destruction  Ever  put 

Together  of  Flesh  and  Blood 


222  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

destruction  that  God  ever  put  together  of  flesh  and  blood.  He  was 
good,  beautiful  and  true;  and  his  small  life  was  blameless.  And  here 
he  lies,  dead;  snatched  away  from  his  field  of  labor,  and  destroyed,  in 
order  that  I  may  be  tempted  to  dine  three  minutes  longer,  after  I  have 
already  eaten  to  satiety." 

Then  go  on,  and  finish  Bob  White. 

The  Case  of  the  Robin. — For  a  long  time  this  bird  has  been  slaugh- 
tered in  the  South  for  food,  regardless  of  the  agricultural  interests  of  the 
North.  No  Southern  gentleman  ever  shoots  robins,  or  song  birds  of  any 
kind,  but  the  negroes  and  poor  whites  do  it.  The  worst  case  of  recent 
occurrence  was  the  slaughter  in  the  town  of  Pittsboro,  North^Carolina. 

It  was  in  January,  1912.  The  Mayor  o'  the  town,  Hon.  Bonnet  Nooe, 
was  away  from  home;  and  during  a  heavy  fall  of  snow  "the  robins  came 
into  the  town  in  great  numbers  to  feed  upon  the  berries  of  the  cedar 
trees.  In  order  that  the  birds  might  be  killed  without  restriction,  the 
Board  of  Aldermen  suspended  the  ordinance  against  the  firing  of  guns  in 
the  town,  and  permitted  the  inhabitants  to  kill  the  robins. " 

A  disgraceful  carnival  of  slaughter  immediately  followed  in  which 
"about  all  the  male  population  "  participated.  Regarding  this.  Mayor 
Nooe  later  on  wrote  to  the  editor  of  Bird  Lore  as  follows : 

"Hearing  of  this,  on  my  return,  I  went  to  the  Aldermen,  all  of  whom 
were  guilty,  and  told  them  that  they  and  all  others  who  were  guilty 
would  have  to  be  fined.  Three  out  of  the  five  submitted  and  paid  up, 
but  they  insisted  that  the  ordinance  be  changed  to  read  exactly  as  it  is 
written  here,  with  the  exception  that  all  could  shoot  robins  in  the  town 
until  the  first  of  March;  whereupon  I  resigned,  as  was  stated." — [Bird 
Lore,  XIV,  2.  p  140.) 

The  Mayor  was  quite  right.  The  robin  butchers  of  Pittsboro  were 
not  worthy  to  be  governed  by  him. 

The  Meadow  Lark  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  birds  that  frequent 
farming  regions.  Throughout  the  year  insects  make  up  73  per  cent  of 
its  food,  weed-seeds  12  per  cent,  and  grain  only  5  per  cent.  During  the 
insect  season,  insects  constitute  90  per  cent  of  its  food. 

The  Baltimore  Oriole  is  as  valuable  to  man  as  it  is  beautiful. 
Its  nest  is  the  most  wonderful  example  of  bird  architecture  in  our  land. 
In  May  insects  constitute  90  per  cent  of  this  bird's  food.  For  the  entire 
year,  insects  and  other  animal  food  make  83.4  per  cent  and  vegetable 
matter  16.6  per  cent. 

The  Crow  Blackbird  feeds  as  follows,  throughout  the  whole  year: 
insects,  26.9  per  cent;  other  animal  food  3.4;  corn  37.2;  oats,  2.9; 
wheat,  4.8;  other  grain,  1.6;  fruits,  5;  weed  seeds  and  mast  18.2!  This 
report  was  based  on  the  examination  (by  the  Biological  Survey)  of 
2,346  stomachs,  and  "the  charge  that  the  blackbird  is  an  habitual  robber 
of  birds'  nests  was  disproved  by  the  examinations."     (F.  E.  L.  Beal.) 

Flycatchers. — The  high-water  mark  in  insect-destruction  by  our 
birds    is    reached    bv  the    flvcatchers, — dull-colored,  modest-mannered 


ECONOMIC    VALUE   OF  BIRDS 


223 


little  creatures  that  do  their 
work  so  quietly  you  hardly 
notice  them.  All  you  see 
in  your  tree-tops  is  a  two- 
foot  flit  or  glide,  now  here 
and  now  there,  as  the  leaves 
and  high  branches  are 
combed  of  their  insect  life. 

Bulletin  No.  44  of  the 
Department  of  Agriculture 
gives  the  residuum  of  an 
exhausting  examination  of 
3,398  warbler  stomachs, 
from  seventeen  species  of 
l)irds,  and  the  result  is: 
94.99  per  cent  of  insect 
food, — mostly  bad  insects, 
too, — and  5.01  per  cent 
vegetable  food.  What  more 
can  anv  forester  ask  of  a 
bird? 

The  Sparrows.— All 
our  sparrows  are  great  con- 
stniiers  of  weed  seeds.  Pro- 
fessor Beal  has  calculated 
the  total  quantity  con- 
sumed in  low^a  in  one  year, 
— in  the  days  when  spar- 
rows were  normally  numer- 
ous,— at  1,750,000  pounds. 

The  AiMERicAN  Goldfinch  as  a  weed  destroyer  has  few  equals. 
It  makes  a  specialty  of  the  seeds  of  the  members  of  the  Order  Compositae, 
and  is  especially  fond  of  the  seeds  of  ragweed,  thistles,  wild  lettuce  and 
wild  simflower.  But,  small  and  beautiful  as  this  bird  is,  there  are  htmdreds 
of  thousands  of  grown  men  in  America  who  would  shoot  it  and  eat  it  if 
they  dared! 

The  Hawks  and  Owls. — Let  no  other  state  repeat  the  error  that 
once  was  made  in  Pennsylvania  when  that  state  enacted  in  1885,  her 
now  famous  hawk-and-owl  bounty  law.  In  order  to  accomplish  the 
wholesale  destruction  of  her  birds  of  prey,  a  law  was  passed  providing 
for  the  payment  of  a  bounty  of  fifty  cents  each  for  the  scalps  of  hawks 
and  owls.  Immediately  the  slaughter  began.  In  two  years  180,000 
scalps  were  brought  in,  and  $90,000  were  paid  out  for  them.  It  was 
estimated  that  the  saving  to  the  farmers  in  poultry  amounted  to  one 
dollar  for  each  $1,205  paid  out  in  bounties. 

The  awakening  came  even  more  swiftly  than  the  ornithologists  ex- 
pected.    By  the  end  of  two  years  from  the  passage  of  "the  havv'k  law," 


the  rosr-bre.-xsted  grosbeak 


"The  Potato-bug  Bird, 
From  the 


'  Greatest  Enemy  of  the  Potato  Beetles 
'American  Natural  History" 


224  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

the  farmers  found  their  fields  and  orchards  thoroughly  overrun  by- 
destructive  rats,  mice  and  insects,  and  they  appealed  to  the  legislature 
for  the  quick  repeal  of  the  law.  With  all  possible  haste  this  was  brought 
about;  but  it  was  estimated  by  competent  judges  that  in  damages  to 
their  crops  the  hawk  law  cost  the  people  of  Pennsylvania  nothing  less 
than  two  million  dollars. 

Moral:  Don't  make  any  laws  providing  for  the  destruction  of  hawks 
and  owls  until  you  have  exact  knowledge,  and  know  in  advance  what 
the  results  will  be. 

In  the  space  at  my  disposal  for  this  subject,  it  is  impossible  to  treat 
our  species  of  hawks  and  owls  separately.  The  reader  can  find  in  the 
"American  Natural  History"  fifteen  pages  of  text,  numerous  illustra- 
tions and  many  figures  elucidating  this  subject.  Unfortunately  Dr. 
Fisher's  admirable  work  on  "The  Hawks  and  Owls"  has  long  been  out 
of  print,  and  unobtainable.  There  are,  however,  a  few  observations  that 
must  be  recorded  here. 

Each  bird  of  prey  is  a  balanced  equation.  Each  one,  I  think  with- 
out a  single  exception,  does  some  damage,  chiefly  in  the  destruction  of 
valuable  wild  birds.  The  value  of  the  poultry  destroyed  by  hawks  and 
owls  is  very  small  in  comparion  with  their  killing  of  wild  prey.  Many 
of  the  species  do  not  touch  domestic  poultry!  At  the  same  time,  when  a 
hawk  of  any  kind,  or  an  owl,  sets  to  work  deliberately  and  persistently 
to  clean  out  a  farmer's  poultry  yard,  and  is  actually  doing  it,  that  farmer 
is  justified  in  killing  that  bird.  But,  the  occasional  loss  of  a  broiler  is  not 
to  be  regarded  as  justification  for  a  war  of  extermination  on  all  the 
hawks  that  fly!  Individual  wild-animal  nuisances  can  occasionally  be- 
come so  exasperating  as  to  justify  the  use  of  the  gun, — when  scarecrows 
fail;  but  in  all  such  circumstances  the  greatest  judgment,  and  much  for- 
bearance also,  is  desirable  and  necessary. 

The  value  of  hawks  and  owls  rests  upon  their  perpetual  warfare  on 
the  millions  of  destructive  rats,  mice,  moles,  shrews,  weasels,  rabbits  and 
English  sparrows  that  constantly  prey  upon  what  the  farmer  produces. 
On  this  point  a  few  illustrations  must  be  given.  One  of  the  most  famous 
comes  via  Dr.  Fisher,  from  one  of  the  towers  of  the  Smithsonian  build- 
ings, and  relates  to 

The  Barn  Owl,  {Strix  flammea). — Two  hundred  pellets  consisting 
of  bones,  hair  and  feathers  from  one  nesting  pair  of  these  birds  were 
collected,  and  found  to  contain  454  skulls,  of  which  225  were  of  meadow 
mice,  179  of  house  mice,  2  of  pine  mice,  20  were  of  rats,  6  of  jumping 
mice,  20  were  from  shrews,  1  was  of  a  mole  and  1  a  vesper  sparrow. 
One  bird,  and  453  noxious  mammals!  Compare  this  with  the  record  of 
any  cat  on  earth.  Anything  that  the  barn  owl  wants  from  me,  or  from 
any  farmer,  should  at  once  be  offered  to  it,  on  a  silver  tray.  This  bird 
is  often  called  the  Monkey-Faced  Owl,  and  it  should  be  called  the 
Farmer 's-Friend  Owl. 

The  Long-Eared  Owl,  {Asia  wilsonianus)  has  practically  the  same 
kind  of  a  record  as  the  barn  owl, — scores  of  mice,  rats  and  shrews  de- 


ECONOMIC  VALUE  OF  BIRDS 


225 


stroyed,  and  only  an  occa- 
sional small  bird.  Its 
nearest  relative,  the  Short- 
eared  Owl  {A.  accipitrinus) 
may  be  described  in  the 
same  words. 

The  Great  Horned 
Owl  fills  us  with  conflicting 
passions.  For  the  long  list 
of  dead  rats  and  mice,  poc- 
ket gophers,  skunks,  and 
weasels  to  his  credit,  we 
think  well  of  him,  and  wish 
his  prosperity.  For  the 
song-birds,  ruffed  grouse, 
quail,  other  game  birds, 
domestic  poultry,  squirrels, 
chipmunks  and  hares  that 
he  kills,  we  hate  him,  and 
would  cheerfully  wring  his 
neck,  wearing  gauntlets. 
He  does  an  unusual  amount 
of  good,  and  a  terrible 
amount  of  harm.  It  is  im- 
possible to  strike  a  balance 
for  him,  and  determine  with 
mathematical  accuracy 
whether  he  should  be  shot 
or  permitted  to  live.  At  all 
events,  whenever  Bubo 
comes  up  for  trial,  we  must  give   the  feathered  devil  his  due. 

The  names  "Chicken  Hawk  or  Hen  Hawk"  as  applied  usually 
refer  to  the  Red-Shouldered  or  Red-Tailed  species.  Neither  of  these 
is  really  very  destructive  to  poultry,  but  both  are  very  destructive  to 
mice,  rats  and  other  pestiferous  creatures.  Both  are  large,  showy  birds, 
not  so  very  swift  in  flight,  and  rather  easy  to  approach.  Neither  of  them 
should  be  destroyed, — not  even  though  they  do,  once  in  a  great  while, 
take  a  chicken  or  wild  bird.  They  pay  for  them,  four  times  over,  by  rat- 
killing.  Mr.  J.  Alden  Loring  states  that  he  once  knew  a  pair  of  red- 
shouldered  hawks  to  nest  within  fifty  rods  of  a  poultry  farm  on  which 
there  were  800  young  chickens  and  400  ducks,  not  one  of  which  was 
taken.     (See  the  American  Natural  History,  pages  229-30.) 

Hawks  that  Should  be  Destroyed. — There  are  two  small,  fierce, 
daring,  swift-winged  hawks  both  of  which  are  so  very  destructive  that 
they  deserve  to  be  shot  whenever  possible.  They  are  Cooper's  Hawk 
(Accipiter  cooperi)  and  the  Sharp-Shinned  Hawk  {A.  velox).  They  are 
closely  related,  and  look  much  alike,  but  the  former  has  a  rounded  tail 


THE  barn  owl 

Wonderfully  Destructive  of  Rats  and  Mice,  and 

Almost  Never  Touches  Birds 


226  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

and  the  latter  a  square  one.  In  killing  them,  please  do  not  kill  any  other 
hawk  by  mistake;  and  if  you  do  not  positively  recognize  the  bird,  don't 
shoot. 

The  Goshawk  is  a  bad  one,  and  so  is  the  Peregrine  Falcon,  or 
Duck  Hawk.  Both  deserve  death,  but  they  are  so  rare  that  we  need 
not  take  them  into  account. 

Some  of  the  hawks  and  owls  are  very  destructive  to  song-birds,  and 
members  of  the  grouse  family.  In  159  stomachs  of  sharp-shinned  hawks, 
99  contained  song-birds  and  woodpeckers.  In  133  stomachs  of  Cooper's 
hawks,  34  contained  poultry  or  game  birds,  and  52  contained  other  birds. 
The  game  birds  included  8  quail,  1  ruffed  grouse  and  5  pigeons. 

The  Woodpeckers.* — These  birds  are  the  natural  guardians  of  the 
trees.  If  we  had  enough  of  them,  our  forests  would  be  fairly  safe  from  in- 
sect pests.  Of  the  six  or  seven  North  American  species  that  are  of  the  most 
importance  to  our  forests,  the  Downy  Woodpecker,  {Dryobates  pu- 
bescens)  is  accorded  first  rank.  It  is  one  of  the  smallest  species.  The 
contents  of  140  stomachs  consisted  of  74  per  cent  insects,  25  per  cent 
vegetable  matter  and  1  per  cent  sand.  The  insects  were  ants,  beetles, 
bugs,  flies,  caterpillars,  grasshoppers  and  a  few  spiders. 

The  Hairy  Woodpecker,  {Dryobates  villosus),  a  very  close  relation 
of  the  preceding  species,  is  also  small,  and  his  food  supply  is  as  follows: 
insects,  68  per  cent,  vegetable  matter  31,  mineral  1. 

The  Golden- Winged  Woodpecker,  (Colaptes  auratus),  is  the  largest 
and  handsomest  of  all  the  woodpeckers  that  we  really  see  in  evidence. 
The  Pileated  is  one  of  the  largest,  but  we  never  see  it.  This  bird  makes 
a  specialty  of  ants,  of  which  it  devours  immense  numbers.'  Its  food  is 
56  per  cent  animal  matter  (three-fourths  of  which  is  ants),  39  per  cent 
is  vegetable  matter,  and  5  per  cent  mineral  matter. 

The  Red-Headed  Woodpecker  is  a  serious  fruit-eater,  and  many 
complaints  have  been  lodged  against  him.  Exactly  one-half  his  food 
supply  consists  of  vegetable  matter,  chiefly  wild  berries,  acorns,  beech- 
nuts, and  the  seeds  of  wild  shrubs  and  weeds.  We  may  infer  that  about 
one-tenth  of  his  food,  in  summer  and  fall,  consists  of  cultivated  fruit  and 
berries.  His  proportion  of  cultivated  foods  is  entirely  too  small  to  justify 
any  one  in  destroying  this  species. 

In  view  of  the  prevalence  of  insect  pests  in  the  state  of  New  York, 
I  have  spent  hours  in  trying  to  devise  a  practical  plan  for  making  wood- 
peckers about  ten  times  more  numerous  than  they  now  are.  Contribu- 
tions to  this  problem  will  be  thankfully  received.  Yes;  we  do  put  out 
pork  fat  and  suet  in  winter,  quantities  of  it;  but  I  grieve  to  say  that 
to-day  in  the  Zoological  Park  there  is  not  more  than  one  woodpecker  for 
every  ten  that  were  there  twelve  years  ago.  Where  have  they  gone' 
Only  one  answer  is  possible.  They  have  been  shot  and  eaten,  by  the 
guerrillas  of  destruction. 

*The  reader  is  advised  to  consult  Prof.  F.  E.  L.  Beale's  admirable  report  on  "The 
Food  of  Woodpeckers,"  Bulletin  No.  7,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture. 


ECONOMIC   VALUE   OF  BIRDS 


227 


Surely  no  man  of  intelli- 
gence needs  to  be  told  to 
protect  woodpeckers  to  the 
utmost,  and  to  feed  them  in 
winter.  Nail  up  fat  pork,  or 
large  chunks  of  suet,  on  the 
south  sides  of  conspicuous 
trees,  and  encourage  the 
woodpeckers,  nuthatches, 
chickadees  and  titmice  to  re- 
main in  your  woods  through 
the  long  and  dreary  winter. 

The  English  Sparrow 
is  a  nuisance  and  a  pest, 
because  it  drives  away  from 
the  house  and  the  orchard 
the  house  wren,  bluebird, 
phoebc,  purple  martin  and 
swallow,  any  one  of  which  is 
more  valuable  to  man  than 
a  thousand  English  sparrows. 
I  ne\'er  yet  have  seen  one  of 
the  pest  sparrows  catch  an 
insect,  but  Chief  Forester 
Merkel  says  that  he  has  seen 
one  catching  and  eating  small 
moths. 

There  is  one  place  in  the 
country  where  English  spar- 
rows have  not  yet  come ;  and 
whenever  they  do  appear 
there,  they  will  meet  a  hostile  reception.  I  shall  kill  every  one  that 
comes, — for  the  sake  of  retaining  the  wrens,  catbirds,  phoebes  and 
thrushes  that  now  literally  make  home  happy  for  my  family.  A  good 
way  to  discourage  sparrows  is  to  shoot  them  en  masse  when  the}^  are 
feeding  on  road  refuse,  such  as  the  white-throated,  white-crowned  and 
other  sparrows  never  touch.  Persistent  destruction  of  their  nests  will 
check  the  nuisance. 

The  Shore  Birds. — Who  is  there  who  thinks  of  the  shore-birds  as 
being  directly  beneficial  to  man  by  reason  of  their  food  habits?  I  war- 
rant not  more  than  one  man  in  every  ten  thousand !  We  think  of  them 
only  as  possible  "food."  The  amount  of  actual  cash  value  benefit  that 
the  shore-birds  confer  upon  man  through  the  destruction  of  bad  things 
is ,  in  comparison  with  the  number  of  birds,  enormous. 

The  Department  of  Agriculture  never  publishes  and  circulates  any- 
thing that  has  already  been  published,  no  matter  how  valuable  to  the 
public  at  large.     Our  rules  arc  dififercnt.     Because  I  know  that  many 


GOLDEN-WINGED   WOODPECKER 

A  Bird  of  Great  Value  to  Orchards  and  Forests,  now 

Rapidly  Disappearing,  Undoubtedly 

Through  Slaughter  as  "Food" 


228  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

of  the  people  of  our  country  need  the  information,  I  am  going  to  reprint 
here,  as  an  object  lesson  and  a  warning,  the  whole  of  the  Biological 
Survey's  valuable  and  timely  circiilar  No.  79,  issued  April  11,  1911,  and 
.  written  by  Prof.  W.  L.  McAtee.  It  should  open  the  eyes  of  the  American 
people  to  two  things:  the  economic  value  of  these  birds,  and  the  fact 
that  they  are  everywhere  far  on  the  road  toward  extermination! 

Our  Vanishing  Shorebirds 
By  Prof.  W.  L.  McAtee 

The  term  shorebird  is  applied  to  a  group  of  long-legged,  slender-billed, 
and  usually  plainly  colored  birds  belonging  to  the  order  Limicolas.  More 
than  sixty  species  of  them  occur  in  North  America.  True  to  their  name 
they  frequent  the  shores  of  all  bodies  of  water,  large  and  small,  but  many 
of  them  are  equally  at  home  on  plains  and  prairies. 

Throughout  the  eastern  United  States  shorebirds  are  fast  vanishing. 
While  formerly  numerous  species  swarmed  along  the  Atlantic  coast  and 
in  the  prairie  regions,  many  of  them  have  been  so  reduced  that  exter- 
mination seems  imminent.  The  black-bellied  plover  or  beetlehead,  which 
occurred  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard  in  great  numbers  years  ago,  is  now 
seen  only  as  a  straggler.  The  golden  plover,  once  exceedingly  abundant 
east  of  the  Great  Plains,  is  now  rare.  Vast  hordes  of  long-billed  dowitchers 
formerly  wintered  in  Louisiana ;  now  they  occur  only  in  infrequent  flocks 
of  a  half  dozen  or  less.  The  Eskimo  curlew  within  the  last  decade  has 
probably  been  exterminated  and  the  other  curlews  greatly  reduced.  In 
fact,  all  the  larger  species  of  shorebirds  have  suffered  severely. 

So  adverse  to  shorebirds  are  present  conditions  that  the  wonder  is 
that  any  escape.  In  both  fall  and  spring  they  are  shot  along  the  whole 
route  of  their  migration  north  and  south.  Their  habit  of  decoying  readily 
and  persistently,  coming  back  in  flocks  to  the  decoys  again  and  again, 
in  spite  of  murderous  volleys,  greatly  lessens  their  chances  of  escape. 

The  breeding  grounds  of  some  of  the  species  in  the  United  States 
and  Canada  have  become  greatly  restricted  by  the  extension  of  agricul- 
ture, and  their  winter  ranges  in  South  America  have  probably  been 
restricted  in  the  same  way. 

Unfortunately,  shorebirds  lay  fewer  eggs  than  any  of  the  other  species 
generally  termed  game  birds.  They  deposit  only  three  or  four  eggs, 
and  hatch  only  one  brood  yearly.  Nor  are  they  in  any  wise  immune 
from  the  great  mortality  known  to  prevail  among  the  smaller  birds. 
Their  eggs  and  young  are  constantly  preyed  upon  during  the  breeding 
season  by  crows,  gulls,  and  jaegers,  and  the  far  northern  country  to  which 
so  many  of  them  resort  to  nest  is  subject  to  sudden  cold  storms,  which 
kill  many  of  the  young.  In  the  more  temperate  climate  of  the  United 
States  small  birds,  in  general,  do  not  bring  up  more  than  one  young  bird 
for  every  two  eggs  laid.  Sometimes  the  proportion  of  loss  is  much 
greater,  actual  count  revealing  a  destruction  of  70  to  80  per  cent  of  nests 


ECONOMIC  VALUE   OF  BIRDS  229 

and  eggs.     Shorebirds,  with  sets  of  three  or  four  eggs,  probably  do  not 
on  the  average  rear  more  than  two  young  for  each  breeding  pair. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  birds  of  this  family,  with  their 
limited  powers  of  reproduction,  melt  away  under  the  relentless  warfare 
waged  upon  them.  Until  recent  years  shorebirds  have  had  almost  no 
protection.  Thus,  the  species  most  in  need  of  stringent  protection  have 
really  had  the  least.  No  useful  birds  which  lay  only  three  or  four  eggs 
should  be  retained  on  the  list  of  game  birds.  The  shorebirds  should  be 
relieved  from  persecution,  and  if  we  desire  to  save  from  extermination  a 
majority  of  the  species,  action  must  be  prompt. 

The  protection  of  shorebirds  need  not  be  based  solely  on  esthetic  or 
sentimental  grounds,  for  few  groups  of  birds  more  thoroughly  deserve 
protection  from  an  economic  standpoint.  Shorebirds  perform  an  im- 
portant service  by  their  inroads  upon  mosquitoes,  some  of  which  play  so 
conspicuous  a  part  in  the  dissemination  of  diseases.  ■  Thus,  nine  species 
are  known  to  feed  upon  mosquitoes,  and  hundreds  of  the  larvae  or  "wig- 
glers"  were  found  in  several  stomachs.  Fifty-three  per  cent  of  the  food 
of  twenty-eight  northern  phalaropes  from  one  locality  consisted  of 
mosquito  larvse.  The  insects  eaten  include  the  salt-marsh  mosquito 
(Aedes  sollicitans) ,  for  the  suppression  of  which  the  State  of  New  Jersey 
has  gone  to  great  expense.  The  nine  species  of  shorebirds  known  to  eat 
mosquitoes  are: 

Northern  phalarope  {Lobipes  lohatus) .  Semipalmated  sandpiper  {Ereuneles  pusil- 

Wilson  phalarope  {Steganoptis  tricolor).  Ins). 

Stilt  sandpiper  {Micropalama  liimantopus) .  Killdeer  (Oxyechus  vociferus). 

Pectoral  sand-pi-pcr  (Pisobia  macidata).  Semipalmated  plover   {Aegialitis  semipal- 

Baird  sandoiper  {Pisobia  bairdi).  mata). 

Least  sandpiper  {Pisobia  miniitilla). 

Cattle  and  other  live  stock  also  are  seriously  molested  by  mosquitoes 
as  well  as  by  another  set  of  pests,  the  horse-flies.  Adults  and  larvae  of 
these  flies  have  been  found  in  the  stomachs  of  the  dowitcher,  the  pectoral 
sandpiper,  the  hudsonian  godwit,  and  the  killdeer.  Two  species  of  shore- 
birds,  the  killdeer  and  upland  plover,  still  further  befriend  cattle  by  de- 
vouring the  North  American  fever  tick. 

Among  other  fly  larvaj  consumed  are  those  of  the  crane  flies  (leather- 
jackets)  devoured  by  the  following  species: 

Northern  phalarope  (Lobipes  lobatus).  Pectoral  sandpiper  (Pisobia  maculata). 

Wilson  phalarope  (Steganopus  tricolor).  Baird  sandpiper  (Pisobia  bairdi). 

Woodcock  (Philohela  minor).  Upland  plover  (Bartramia  longicauda). 

Jacksnipe  (Gallinago  delicata).  Killdeer  (OxyecJms  vociferus). 

Crane-fly  larvas  are  frequently  seriously  destructive  locally  in  grass 
and  wheat  fields.  Among  their  numerous  bird  enemies,  shorebirds 
rank  high. 

Another  group  of  insects  of  which  the  shorebirds  are  very  fond  is 
grasshoppers.  Severe  local  infestations  of  grasshoppers,  frequently  in- 
volving the  destruction  of  m.any  acres  of  corn,  cotton,  and  other  crops, 


230 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


^% 


'SV'-*C^^ 


.-, '     -'-at  ^t-^wr*  --  ->' 


The  I'ilUeer  Plover  The  Jacksnipe 

TWO    MEMBERS   OF   THE    GROUP   OF  SHORE-BIRDS 

These,  with  28  other  species,  destroy  enorir.ous  numbers  of  locusts,  grasshoppers,  crane-fly 
larvae,  mosquito  larvae,  army-worms,  cut-worms  cotton-worms,  boll-weevils,  curculios,  wire-worms 
and  clover-leaf  weevils.  It  is  insane  folly  to  shoot  any  birds  that  do  such  work!  Many  species 
of  the    shore-birds  are  rapidly  being  exterminated. 

are  by  no  means  exceptional.  Aughey  found  twenty-three  species  of 
shorebirds  feeding  on  Rocky  Mountain  locusts  in  Nebraska,  some  of 
them  consuming  large  numbers,  as  shown  below. 

9  killdeer  stomachs  contained  an  average  of  28  locusts  each. 
11  semipalmated  plover  stomachs  contained  an  average  of  38  locusts  each. 
16  mountain  plover  stomachs  contained  an  average  of  45  locusts  each. 
11  jacksnipe  stomachs  contained  an  average  of  37  locusts  each. 
22  upland  plover  stomachs  contained  an  average  of  36  locusts  each. 
10  long-billed  curlew  stomachs  contained  an  average  of  48  locusts  each. 

Even  under  ordinary  conditions  grasshoppers  are  a  staple  food  of 
many  members  of  the  shorebird  family,  and  the  following  species  are 
known  to  feed  on  thein: 


Northern  phalarope  {Lobipes  lobatus). 
Avocet  {Recurvirostra  americana). 
Black-necked  stilt  {Himantopus  mexicanus). 
Woodcock  {Philohela  minor). 
Jacksnipe  {Gallinago  delicata). 
Dowitcher  (Macrorhamphiis  griseusj. 
Robin  snipe  (Tringa  caniitus). 
White-rumped  sandpiper  {Pisobia  fuscicol- 

lis) . 
Baird  sandpiper  {Pisobia  bairdi). 
Least  sandpiper  {Pisobia  minutilla). 


Buff-breasted    sandpiper    [Tryngites    sub- 

ruficollis). 
Spotted  sandpiper  {Actitis  macidaria) . 
Long-billed  curlew    {Numenius  american- 

us) . 
Black-bellied   plover    {Squatarola   squatar- 

ola). 
Golden  plover  {Charadrius  doniinicus) . 
Killdeer  {Oxyechus  vociferus). 
Semipalmated  plover  {Aegialitis  semipal- 

mata). 


ECONOMIC  VALUE  OF  BIRDS  231 

Marbled  godwit  {Limosa  fedoa).  Ringed  plover  {Aegialitis  hiaticula). 

Yellowlegs  {Totanus  flavipes).  Mountain  plover  {Podasocys  montanus). 

Solitary  sandpiper  (Helodromas  solitarius) .      Turnstone  {Arenaria  inter pres). 
Upland  plover  {Bartramia  longicauda). 

vShorebirds  are  fond  of  other  insect  i^ests  of  forage  and  grain  crops, 
including  the  army  worm,  which  is  known  to  be  eaten  by  the  killdeer 
and  spotted  sandpiper;  also  cutworms,  among  whose  enemies  are  the 
avocet,  woodcock,  pectoral  and  Baird  sandpipers,  upland  plover,  and 
killdeer.  Two  caterpillar  enemies  of  cotton,  the  cotton  worm  and  the 
cotton  cutworm,  are  eaten  by  the  upland  plover  and  killdeer.  The  latter 
bird  feeds  also  on  caterpillars  of  the  genus  Phlegethontius,  which  includes 
the  tobacco  and  tomato  worms. 

The  principal  farm  crops  have  many  destructive  beetle  enemies  also, 
and  some  of  these  are  eagerly  eaten  by  shorebirds.  The  boll  weevil  and 
clover-leaf  weevil  are  eaten  by  the  upland  plover  and  killdeer,  the  rice 
weevil  by  the  killdeer,  the  cowpea  weevil  by  the  upland  plover,  and  the 
clover-root  curculio  by  the  following  species  of  shorebirds : 

Northern  phalarope  {Lobipes  lohatus).        White-rumped  sandpiper  {Pisobia  fuscicollis) 
Pectoral  sandpiper  {Pisobia  maculata).       Upland  plover  {Bartramia  longicauda). 
Baird  sandpiper  {Pisobia  bairdi).  Killdeer  {Oxyechus  vociferus) . 

The  last  two  eat  also  other  weevils  which  attack  cotton,  grapes  and 
sugar  beets.  Bill-bugs,  which  often  do  considerable  damage  to  corn, 
seem  to  be  favorite  food  of  some  of  the  shorebirds.  They  are  eaten  by 
the  Wilson  phalarope,  avocet,  black-necked  stilt,  pectoral  sandpiper, 
killdeer,  and  upland  plover.  They  are  an  important  element  of  the  latter 
bird's  diet,  and  no  fewer  than  eight  species  of  them  have  been  found  in 
its  food. 

Wire  worms  and  their  adult  forms,  click  beetles,  are  devoured  by  the 
northern  phalarope,  woodcock,  jacksnipe,  pectoral  sandpiper,  killdeer, 
and  upland  plover.  The  last  three  feed  also  on  the  southern  corn  leaf- 
beetle  and  the  last  two  upon  the  grapevine  colaspis.  Other  shorebirds 
that  eat  leaf -beetles  are  the  Wilson  phalarope  and  dowitcher. 

Crayfishes,  which  are  a  pest  in  rice  and  corn  fields  in  the  South  and 
which  injure  levees,  are  favorite  food  of  the  black-necked  stilt,  and  several 
other  shorebirds  feed  upon  them,  notably  the  jacksnipe,  robin  snipe, 
spotted  sandpiper,  upland  plover,  and  killdeer. 

Thus  it  is  evident  that  shorebirds  render  important  aid  by  devouring 
the  enemies  of  farm  crops  and  in  other  ways,  and  their  services  arc  appre- 
ciated by  those  who  have  observed  the  birds  in  the  field.  Thus  W.  A. 
Clark,  of  Corpus  Christi,  Tex.,  reports  that  upland  plovers  are  industrious 
in  following  the  plow  and  in  eating  the  grubs  that  destroy  garden  stuff, 
corn,  and  cotton  crops.  H.  W.  Tinkham,  of  Fall  River,  Mass.,  says  of 
the  spotted  sandpiper:  "Three  pairs  nested  in  a  young  orchard  behind 
my  house  and  adjacent  to  my  garden.  I  did  not  see  them  once  go  to  the 
shore  for  food  (shore  about  1,500  feet  away),  but  I  did  see  them  many 
times  make  faithful  search  of  my  garden  for  cutworms,  spotted  squash 


-232  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

bugs,  and  green  flies.  Cutworms  and  cabbage  worms  were  their  special 
prey.  After  the  young  could  fly,  they  still  kept  at  work  in  my  garden, 
and  showed  no  inclination  to  go  to  the  shore  until  about  August  15th. 
They  and  a  flock  of  quails  just  over  the  wall  helped  me  wonderfully." 

In  the  uncultivated  parts  of  their  range  also,  shorebirds  search  out 
and  destroy  many  creatures  that  are  detrimental  to  man's  interest. 
Several  species  prey  upon  the  predaceous  diving  beetles  (Dytiscidae) , 
which  are  a  nuisance  in  fish  hatcheries  and  which  destroy  many  insects, 
the  natural  food  of  fishes.    The  birds  now  known  to  take  these  beetles  are : 

Northern  phalarope  {Lohipes  lobatus).  Dowitcher  {Macrorhamphus  griseus). 

Wilson  phalarope  {Steganopus  tricolor).  Robin  snipe  {Tringa  canutus). 

Avocet  {Recurvirostra  americana).  Pectoral  sandpiper  (Pisobia  macnlata). 

Black-necked  stilt  {Himantopus  mexicanus).  Red-backed  sandpiper  {Pelidna  alpina  sak- 
Jacksnipe  (Gallinago  delicata).  halina). 

Killdeer  {Oxyechus  vociferus). 

Large  numbers  of  marine  worms  of  the  genus  Nereis,  which  prey  upon 
oysters,  are  eaten  by  shorebirds.  These  worms  are  common  on  both  the 
Atlantic  and  Gulf  coasts  and  are  eaten  by  shorebirds  wherever  they 
occur.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  find  that  from  100  to  250  of  them  have 
been  eaten  at  one  meal.     The  birds  known  to    feed  upon  them  are: 

Northern  phalarope  {Lohipes  lobatus).  White-rumped  sandpiper  (Pisobia  fuscicol- 

Dowitcher  {Macrorhamphus  griseus).  lis). 

Stilt  sandpiper  {Micropalama  himantopus) .  Red-backed  sandpiper  {Pelidna  alpina  sak- 

Robin  snipe  {Tringa  canutus) .  halina). 

Purple  sandpiper  {Arquatella  maritima).  Killdeer  {Oxyechus  vociferus). 

The  economic  record  of  the  shorebirds  deserves  nothing  but  praise. 
These  birds  injure  no  crop,  but  on  the  contrary  feed  upon  many  of  the 
worst  enemies  of  agriculture.  It  is  worth  recalling  that  their  diet  in- 
cludes such  pests  as  the  Rocky  Mountain  locust  and  other  injurious 
grasshoppers,  the  army  worm,  cutworms,  cabbage  worms,  cotton  worm, 
cotton  cutworm,  boll  weevil,  clover  leaf  weevil,  clover  root  curculio,  rice 
weevil,  corn  bill-bugs  wire  worms,  corn  leaf -beetles,  cucumber  beetles, 
white  grubs,  and  such  foes  of  stock  as  the  Texas  fever  tick,  horseflies, 
and  mosquitoes.  Their  warfare  on  crayfishes  must  not  be  overlooked, 
nor  must  we  forget  the  more  personal  debt  of  gratitude  we  owe  them  for 
preying  upon  mosquitoes.  They  are  the  most  important  bird  enemies 
of  these  pests  known  to  us. 

Shorebirds  have  been  hunted  until  only  a  remnant  of  their  once  vast 
numbers  is  left.  Their  limited  powers  of  reproduction,  coupled  with 
the  natural  vicissitudes  of  the  breeding  period,  make  their  increase  slow, 
and  peculiarly  expose  them  to  danger  of  extermination. 

In  the  way  of  protection  a  beginning  has  been  made,  and  a  continuous 
close  season  until  1915  has  been  established  for  the  following  birds: 
The  killdeer,  in  Massachusetts  and  Louisiana;  the  upland  plover,  in 
Massachusetts,  and  Vermont;  and  the  piping  plover  in  Massachusetts. 
But,  considering  the  needs  and  value  of  these  birds,  this  modicum  of 
protection  is  small  indeed. 


ECONOMIC  VALUE  OF  BIRDS  233'. 

The  above-named  species  are  not  the  only  ones  that  should  be  ex- 
empt from  persecution,  for  all  the  shorebirds  of  the  United  States  are  in 
great  need  of  better  protection.  They  should  be  protected,  first,  to  save 
them  from  the  danger  of  extermination,  and,  second,  because  of  their 
economic  importance.  So  great,  indeed,  is  their  economic  value,  that 
their  retenion  on  the  game  list  and  their  destruction  by  sportsmen  is  a 
serious  loss  to  agriculture. ^ — (End  of  the  circular.) 


The  following  appeared  in  the  Zoological  Society  Bulletin,  for  Jan- 
uary, 1909,  from  Richard  Walter  Tomalin,  of  Sydney,  N.  S.  W. : 

"In  the  subdistricts  of  Robertson  and  Kangaloon  in  the  Illawarra 
district  of  New  South  Wales,  what  ten  years  ago  was  a  waving  mass  of 
English  cocksfoot  and  rye  grass,  which  had  been  put  in  gradually  as  the 
dense  vine  scrub  was  felled  and  burnt  off,  is  now  a  barren  desert,  and 
nine  families  out  of  every  ten  which  were  renting  properties  have  been 
compelled  to  leave  the  district  and  take  up  other  lands.  This  is  through 
the  grubs  having  eaten  out  the  grass  by  the  roots.  Ploughing  proved 
to  be  useless,  as  the  grubs  ate  out  the  grass  just  the  same.  Whilst  there 
recently  I  was  informed  that  it  took  three  years  from  the  time  the  grubs 
were  first  seen  until  to-day,  to  accomplish  this  complete  devastation; 
in  other  words,  three  years  ago  the  grubs  began  work  in  the  beautiful 
country  of  green  mountains  and  running  streams. 

"The  birds  had  all  been  ruthlessly  shot  and  destroyed  in  that  dis- 
trict, and  I  was  amazed  at  the  absence  of  bird  life.  The  two  sub-districts 
I  have  mentioned  have  an  area  of  about  thirty  square  miles,  and  form  a 
table-land  about  1200  feet  above  sea  level." 

The  same  kind  of  common  sense  that  teaches  men  to  go  in  when  it 
rains,  and  keep  out  of  fiery  furnaces,  teaches  us  that  as  a  business  prop- 
osition it  is  to  man's  interest  to  protect  the  birds.  Make  them  plentiful 
and  keep  them  so.  When  we  strike  the  birds,  we  hurt  ourselves.  The 
protection  of  our  insect-eating  and  seed-eating  birds  is  a  cash  proposi- 
tion,— protect  or  pay. 

Were  I  a  farmer,  no  gun  ever  should  be  fired  on  my  premises  at  any 
bird  save  the  English  sparrow  and  the  three  bad  hawks.  Any  man  who 
would  kill  my  friend  Bob  White  I  would  treat  as  an  enemy.  The  man  who 
would  shoot  and  eat  any  of  the  song-birds,  woodpeckers,  or  shorebirds 
that  worked  for  me,  I  would  surely  molest. 

Every  farmer  should  post  every  foot  of  his  lands,  cultivated  and  not 
cultivated.  The  farmer  who  does  not  do  so  is  his  own  enemy ;  and  he  needs 
a  guardian. 

At  this  stage  of  wild  life  extermination,  it  is  impossible  to  make  our 
bird-protection  laws  too  strict,  or  too  far-reaching.  The  remnant  of 
our  birds  should  be  protected,  with  clubs  and  guns  if  necessary.  All  our 
shore  birds  should  be  accorded  a  ten-year  close  season.  Don't  ask  the 
gunners  whether  they  will  agree  to  it  or  not.  Of  course  they  will  not 
agree  to  it, — never!      But  our  duty  is  clear, — to  go  ahead  and  do  it! 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
GAME  AND  AGRICULTURE;   AND  DEER  AS  A  FOOD  SUPPLY 

As  a  state  and  county  asset,  the  white-tailed  deer  contains  possi- 
bilities that  as  yet  seem  to  be  ignored  by  the  American  people  as  a  whole. 
It  is  quite  time  to  consider  that  persistent,  prolific  and  toothsome  animal. 

The  proposition  that  large  herds  of  horned  game  can  not  becomingly 
roam  at  will  over  farms  and  vineyards  worth  one  hundred  dollars  per  acre, 
affords  little  room  for  argument.  Generally  speaking,  there  is  but  one 
country  in  the  world  that  breaks  this  well-nigh  universal  rule;  and  that 
country  is  India.  On  the  plains  between  and  adjacent  to  the  Ganges 
and  the  Jumna,  for  two  thousand  years  herds  of  black-buck,  or  sasin  ante- 
lope, have  roamed  over  cultivated  fields  so  thickly  garnished  with  human 
beings  that  to-day  the  rifle-shooting  sportsman  stands  in  hourly  peril  of 
bagging  a  five-hundred-rupee  native  every  time  he  fires  at  an  antelope. 

Wherever  rich  agricultural  lands  exist,  the  big  game  must  give  way, — 
Jrofn  those  lands.  To-day  the  bison  could  not  survive  in  Iowa,  eastern 
Nebraska  or  eastern  Kansas,  any  longer  than  a  Shawnee  Indian  would 
last  on  the  Bowery.  It  was  foredoomed  that  the  elk,  deer,  bear  and  wild 
turkey  should  vanish  from  the  rich  farming  regions  of  the  East  and  the 
middle  West. 

To-day  in  British  East  Africa  lions  are  being  hunted  with  dogs  and 
shot  wholesale,  because  they  are  a  pest  to  the  settlers  and  to  the  surviving 
herds  of  big  game.  At  the  same  time,  the  settlers  who  are  striving  to 
wrest  the  fertile  plains  of  B.  E.  A.  from  the  domain  of  savagery  declare 
that  the  African  buffalo,  the  zebra,  the  kongoni  and  the  elephant  are 
public  nuisances  that  must  be  suppressed  by  the  rifle. 

Even  the  most  ardent  friend  of  wild  life  must  admit  that  when  a 
settler  has  laboriously  fenced  his  fields,  and  plowed  and  sowed,  only  to 
have  his  whole  crop  ruined  in  one  night  by  a  herd  of  fence-breaking 
zebras,  the  event  is  sufficient  to  abrade  the  nerves  of  the  party  most  in 
interest.  While  I  take  no  stock  in  stories  of  dozens  of  "rogue "  elephants 
that  require  treatment  with  the  rifle,  and  of  grown  men  being  imperiled 
by  savage  gazelles,  we  admit  that  there  are  times  when  wild  animals  can 
make  nuisances  of  themselves.     Let  us  consider  that  subject  now. 

Wild  Animal  Nuisances. — Complaints  have  come  to  me,  at  various 
times,  of  great  destruction  of  lambs  by  eagles ;  of  trout  by  blue  herons ; 
of  crops  (on  Long  Island)  by  deer;  of  pears  destroyed  by  birds,  and  of 
valuable  park  trees  by  beavers  that  chop  down  trees  not  wisely  but  too 
well.  I  do  not,  however,  include  in  this  category  any  cherries  eaten  by 
robins,  or  orioles,  or  jays;  for  they  are  of  too  small  importance  to  con- 
sider in  this  court. 


GAME  AND   AGRICULTURE;    DEER   AS   FOOD 


235. 


A  FOOD   SUPPLY  OF  WHITE-TAILED    DEER 
The  Killing  of  the  Does  was  Wrong 

To  meet  the  legitiinate  dcinands  for  the  abatement  of  unbearable 
wild-animal  nuisances,  I  recommend  the  enactment  of  a  law  similar  to 
Section  158  of  the  Game  laws  of  New  York,  which  provides  for  the  safe 
and  legitimate  abatement  of  unbearable  wild  creatures  as  follows : 

vSection  158.  Power  to  Take  Birds  and  Quadrupeds.  In  the  event  that  any  sjiecies  of 
birds  protected  by  the  provisions  of  section  two  hundred  and  nineteen  of  this  article,  or 
quadrupeds  protected  by  law,  shall  at  any  time,  in  any  locality,  become  destructive  of 
private  or  public  property,  the  commission  shall  have  power  in  its  discretion  to  direct 
any  game  protector,  or  issue  a  permit  to  any  citizen  of  the  state,  to  take  such  species  of 
birds  or  quadrupeds  and  dispose  of  the  same  in  such  manner  as  the  commission  inay 
provide.     Such  permit  shall  expire  within  four  months  after  the  date  of  issuance. 

This  measure  should  be  adopted  b}^  every  state  that  is  troubled  bv 
too  many,  or  too  aggressive,  wild  inammals  or  birds. 

But  to  return  to  the  subject  of  big  game  and  farming.  AVe  do  not 
complain  of  the  disappearance  of  the  bison,  elk,  deer  and  bear  from  the 
farms  of  the  United  States  and  Canada.  The  passing  of  the  big  game 
from  all  such  regions  follows  the  advance  of  real  civilization,  just  so 
surely  and  certainly  as  night  follows  day. 

But  this  vast  land  of  ours  is  not  wholly  composed  of  rich  agricultural 
lands;  not  by  any  means.  There  are  millions  of  acres  of  forest  lands, 
good,  bad  and  indifferent,  worth  from  nothing  per  acre  up  to  one  hundred 


236  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

•dollars  or  more.  There  are  millions  of  acres  of  rocky,  brush-covered 
mountains  and  hills,  wholly  unsuited  to  agriculture,  or  even  horticulture. 
There  are  other  millions  of  acres  of  arid  plains  and  arboreal  deserts,  on 
which  nothing  but  thirst-proof  animals  can  live  and  thrive.  The  South 
contains  vast  pine  forests  and  cypress  swamps,  millions  of  acres  of  them, 
of  which  the  average  northerner  knows  less  than  nothing. 

We  can  not  stop  long  enough  to  look  it  up,  but  from  the  green  color 
on  our  national  map  that  betokens  the  forest  reserves,  and  from  our  own 
personal  knowledge  of  the  deserts,  swamps,  barrens  and  rocks  that  we 
have  seen,  we  make  the  estimate  that  fully  one-third  of  the  total  area  of  the 
United  States  is  incapable  of  supporting  the  husbandman  who  depends 
for  his  existence  upon  tillage  of  the  soil.  People  may  talk  and  write  about 
"dry  farming"  all  they  please,  but  I  wish  to  observe  that  from  Dry- 
Farming  to  Success  is  a  long  shot,  with  many  limbs  in  the  way.  When  it 
rains  sufficiently,  dry  farming  is  a  success ;  but  otherwise  it  is  not ;  and 
we  heartily  wish  it  were  otherwise. 

The  logical  conclusion  of  our  land  that  is  utterly  unfit  for  agri  ulture 
is  a  great  area  of  land  available  for  occupancy  by  valuable  wild  animals. 
Every  year  the  people  of  the  United  States  are  wasting  uncountable  mil- 
lions of  pounds  of  venison,  because  we  are  neglecting  our  opportunities 
for  producing  it  practically  without  cost.  Imagine  for  a  moment  bestow- 
ing upon  land  owners  the  ability  to  stock  with  white-tailed  and  Indian 
sambar  deer  all  the  wild  lands  of  the  United  States  that  are  suitable  for 
those  species,  and  permitting  only  bucks  over  one  year  of  age  to  be  shot. 
With  the  does  even  reasonably  protected,  the  numerical  results  in  annual 
pounds  of  good  edible  flesh  fairly  challenges  the  imagination. 

About  six  years  ago,  Mr.  C.  C.  Worthington's  deer,  in  his  fenced  park 
at  Shawnee-on-Delaware,  Pennsylvania,  became  so  numerous  and  so 
burdensome  that  he  opened  his  fences  and  permitted  about  one  thousand 
head  to  go  free. 

We  are  losing  each  year  a  very  large  and  valuable  asset  in  the  intan- 
gible form  of  a  million  hardy  deer  that  we  might  have  raised  but  did  not ! 
Our  vast  domains  of  wooded  mountains,  hills  and  valleys  lie  practically 
untenanted  by  big  game,  save  in  a  few  exceptional  spots.  We  lose  be- 
cause we  are  lawless.  We  lose  because  we  are  too  improvident  to  conserve 
large  forms  of  wild  life  unless  we  are  compelled  to  do  so  by  the  stern  edict 
of  the  law!  The  law-breakers,  the  game-hogs,  the  conscienceless  doe- 
and-fawn  slayers  are  everywhere!  Ten  per  cent  of  all  the  grown  men 
now  in  the  United  States  are  to-day  poachers,  thieves  and  law-breakers, 
or  else  they  are  liable  to  become  so  to-morrow.  If  you  doubt  it,  try 
risking  your  new  umbrella  unprotected  in  the  next  mixed  company  of 
one  hundred  men  that  you  encounter,  in  such  a  situation  that  it  will  be 
easy  to  "get  away"  with  it. 

We  could  raise  two  million  deer  each  year  on  our  empty  wild  lands; 
but  without  fences  it  would  take  half  a  million  real  game-wardens,  on 
-duty  from  dawn  until  dark,  to  protect  them  from  destructive  slaughter. 


GAME  AND   AGRICULTURE;   DEER   AS   FOOD  237 

At  present  our  land  of  liberty  contains  only  9,354  game  wardens.*  The 
states  that  contain  the  greatest  areas  of  wild  lands  naturally  lack  in 
population  and  in  tax  funds,  and  not  one  such  state  can  afford  to  put  into 
the  field  even  half  enough  salaried  game  wardens  to  really  protect  her 
game  from  surreptitious  slaughter.  The  surplus  of  "personal  liberty" 
in  this  liberty-cursed  land  is  a  curse  to  the  big  game.  The  average 
frontiersman  never  will  admit  the  divine  right  of  kings,  but  he  does 
ardently  believe  in  the  divine  right  of  settlers, — to  reach  out  and  take 
any  of  the  products  of  Nature  that  they  happen  to  fancy. 

Wild  Meat  as  a  Food  Supply. — We  hear  much  these  days  about 
the  high  cost  of  living,  but  thus  far  we  have  made  no  move  to  mend  the 
situation.  With  coal  going  straight  up  to  ten  dollars  per  ton,  beef  going 
up  to  fifteen  dollars  per  hundred  on  the  hoof  and  wheat  and  hay  going- 
up — heaven  alone  knows  where,  it  is  time  for  all  Americans  who  are  not 
rich  to  arouse  and  take  thought  for  the  morrow.  What  are  we  going  to 
do  about  itf  The  tariff  on  the  coarser  necessities  of  life  is  now  booked  to 
come  down;   but  what  about  the  fresh  meat  supply? 

I  desire  to  point  out  that  between  Bangor  and  San  Diego  and  from 
Key  West  to  Bellingham,  our  country  contains  millions  of  acres  of  wild, 
practically  uninhabited  forests,  rough  foot-hills,  bad-lands  and  mountains 
that  could  produce  two  million  deer  each  year,  without  deducting 
$50,000  a  year  from  the  wealth  of  the  country.  I  grant  that  in  the  total 
number  of  deer  that  would  be  necessary  to  produce  two  million  deer  per 
annum,  the  farms  situated  on  the  edges  of  forests,  and  actually  within 
the  forests,  would  suffer  somewhat  from  the  depredations  of  those  deer. 
As  I  will  presently  show  by  documentary  records,  every  one  of  those 
individual  damages  that  exceeds  two  dollars  in  value  could  be  com- 
pensated in  cash,  and  afterward  leave  on  the  credit  side  of  the  deer  account 
an  enormous  annual  balance. 

Stop  for  a  moment,  you  enterprising  atid  restless  men  and  women 
who  travel  all  over  the  United  States,  and  think  of  the  illimitable  miles 
of  unbroken  forest  that  you  have  looked  upon  from  your  Pullman 
windows  in  the  East,  in  the  South,  in  the  West  and  in  southern  Canada. 
Recall  the  wooded  mountains  of  the  Appalachian  system,  the  White 
Mountain  region,  the  pine  forests  of  the  Atlantic  Coast  and  the  Gulf 
States,  the  forests  of  Tennessee,  Arkansas  and  southern  Missouri;  of 
northern  Minnesota,  and  every  state  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  region. 
Then,  think  of  the  silent  and  untouched  forests  of  the  Pacific  Coast  and 
tell  me  whether  you  think  five  million  deer  scattered  through  all  those 
forests  would  make  any  visible  impression  upon  them.  That  would  be 
only  about  twenty-five  times  as  many  as  are  there  now!  I  think  the 
forests  would  not  be  over  populated;  and  they  would  produce  two  mil- 
lion killable  deer  each  year! 

Last  year,  11,000  deer  were  forced  down  out  of  their  hiding  places 
in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  were  killed  in  Montana.    Even  the  natives 

*  Of  this  force,  there  are  only  1,200  salaried  wardens.    The  most  of  those  who  serve 
without  salaries  naturally  render  but  little  continuous  or  regular  service. 


238  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

had  not  dreamed  there  were  so  many  available ;  and  they  were  slaughtered 
not  wisely  but  too  ill.  It  is  not  right  that  six  members  of  one  family 
should  "hog"  twelve  deer  in  one  season.  At  present  no  deer  supply  can 
stand  such  slaughter. 

Assuming  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  cottld  be  educated 
into  the  idea  of  so  conserving  deer  that  they  could  draw  two  million 
head  per  year  from  the  general  stock,  what  would  it  be  worth? 

It  is  not  very  difficult  to  estimate  the  value  of  a  deer,  when  the  whole 
animal  can  be  utilized.  In  various  portions  of  the  United  States,  deer 
vary  in  size,  but  I  shall  take  all  this  into  account,  and  try  to  strike  a  fair 
average.  In  some  sections,  where  deer  are  large  and  heavy,  a  full-grown 
buck  is  easily  worth  twenty-five  dollars.  Let  him  who  doubts  it,  try  to 
replace  those  generous  pounds  of  flesh  with  purchased  beef  and  mutton 
and  veal,  and  see  how  far  twenty-five  dollars  will  go  toward  it.  Every 
man  who  is  a  householder  knows  full  well  how  little  meat  one  dollar  will 
buy  at  this  time. 

I  think  that  throughout  the  United  States  as  a  whole  every  full-grown 
deer,  male  or  female  contains  on  an  average  ten  dollars  worth  of  good 
meat.  I  know  of  one  large  preserve  which  annually  sells  its  surplus  of 
deer  at  that  price,  wholesale,  to  dealers;  and  in  New  York  City  (doubt- 
less in  many  other  cities,  also)  venison  often  has  sold  in  the  market  at 
one  dollar  per  pound ! 

Two  milHon  deer  at  $10  each  mean  $20,000,000.  The  Hcenses  for  the 
killing  of  two  million  deer  should  cost  one  million  men  one  dollar  each; 
and  that  would  pay  1,666  new  game  wardens  each  fifty  dollars  per  month, 
all  the  year  round.  The  damages  that  would  need  to  be  paid  to  farmers, 
on  account  of  crops  injured  by  deer,  would  be  so  small  that  each  county 
could  take  care  of  its  own  cases,  from  its  own  treasury,  as  is  done  in  the 
State  of  Vermont. 

There  are  certain  essentials  to  the  realization  of  a  dream  of  two  mil- 
lion deer  per  year  that  are  absolutely  required.  They  are  neither  obscure 
nor  impossible. 

Each  state  and  each  county  proposing  to  stock  its  vacant  woods 
with  deer  must  resolutely  educate  its  own  people  in  the  necessity  of 
playing  fair  about  the  killing  of  deer,  and  giving  every  man  and  every 
deer  a  square  deal.  This  is  not  impossible!  Not  as  a  general  thing,  even 
though  it  may  be  so  in  some  specially  lawless  communities.  If  the 
leading  men  of  the  state  and  the  county  will  take  this  matter  seriously  in 
hand,  it  can  be  done  in  two  years'  time.  The  American  people  are  not 
insensible  to  appeals  to  reason,  when  those  appeals  are  made  by  their 
own  "home  folks."  The  governors,  senators,  assemblymen,  judges, 
mayors  and  justices  of  the  peace  could,  if  they  would,  make  a  campaign 
of  education  and  appeal  that  would  result  in  the  creation  of  an  immense 
volume  of  free  wild  food  in  every  state  that  possesses  wild  lands. 

When  the  shoe  of  Necessity  pinches  the  People  hard  enough,  remem- 
ber the  possibilities  in  deer. 


240 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


The  best  wild  animal  to  furnish  a  serious  food  supply  is  the  white- 
tailed  deer.  This  is  because  of  its  persistence  and  fertility.  The  elk  is 
too  large  for  general  use.  An  elk  carcass  can  not  be  carried  on  a  horse; 
it  is  impossible  to  get  a  sled  or  a  wagon  to  where  it  lies ;  and  so,  fully  half 
of  it  usually  is  wasted !  The  mule  deer  is  good  for  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
and  can  live  where  the  white-tail  can  not ;  but  it  is  too  easy  to  shoot!  The 
Columbian  black-tail  is  the  natural  species  for  the  forests  of  the  Pacific 
states;  but  it  is  a  trifile  small  in  size. 

The  Example  of  Vermont. — In  order  to  show  that  all  the  above  is 
not  based  on  empty  theory, — regarding  the  stocking  of  forests  with 
deer,  their  wonderful  powers  of  increase,  and  the  practical  handling  of 
the  damage  question, — let  us  take  the  experience  and  the  fine  example 
of  Vermont. 

In  April,  1875,  a  few  sportsmen  of  Rutland,  of  whom  the  late  Henr}^ 
W.  Cheney  was  one,  procured  in  the  Adirondacks  thirteen  white-tailed 
deer,  six  bucks  and  seven  does.  These  were  liberated  in  a  forest  six 
miles  from  Rutland,  and  beyond  being  protected  from  slaughter,  they 
were  left  to  shift  for  themselves.  They  increased,  slowly  at  first,  then 
rapidly,  and  by  1897,  they  had  become  so  numerous  that  it  seemed  right 
to  have  a  short  annual  open  season,  and  kill  a  few.  From  first  to  last, 
many  of  those  deer  have  been  killed  contrary  to  law.  In  1904-5,  it  was 
known  that  294  head  were  destroyed  in  that  way;  and  undoubtedly 
there  were  others  that  were  not  reported. 


Account  of  Deer  Killed  in  Vermont,  of  Record    Since  Killing 

Began,  in  1897 

From  John  W.  Titcomh,  State  Game  Commissioner,  Lyndonville,  Vt.,  Aug.  2j,  igiz 


By 

By 

By 

Wounded 

By 

By 

Average 

Gross 

Year 

Hunters, 

Hunters, 

Dogs 

Deer 

Railroad 

Various 

Weight 

Weight 

Legally 

Illegally 

Killed 

Trains 

Accidents 

(lbs.) 

(lbs.) 

1897* 

103 

47 

1898 

131 

30 

40 

3 

1899 

90 

1900 

123 

1901 

211 

1902 

403 

81 

50 

13 

14 

171 

68,747 

1903 

753 

199 

190 

142,829 

1904 

541 

1905 

497 

163 

74 

22 

18 

17 

198 

1906 

634 

200 

127,193 

1907 

991 

287 

208 

62 

31 

21 

196 

134,353 

1908 

2,208 

207 

457,585 

1909 

4,597 

381 

168 

69 

24 

72 

155 

716,358 

*  First  open  season  after  deer  restored  to  state  in  1875. 

Damages  to  Crops  by  Deer. — For  several  years  past,  the  various 
counties  of  Vermont  have  been  paying  farmers  for  damages  inflicted  upon 


GAME  AND   AGRICULTURE;  DEER  AS  FOOD  241 

their  crops  by  deer.  Clearl3^  it  is  more  just  that  counties  should  settle 
these  damages  than  that  they  should  be  paid  from  the  state  treasury, 
because  the  counties  paying  damages  have  large  compensation  in  the 
value  of  the  deer  killed  each  year.  The  hunting  appears  to  be  open  to 
all  persons  who  hold  licenses  from  the  state. 

In  order  that  the  public  at  large  may  know  the  cost  of  the  Vermont 
system,  I  offer  the  following  digest  compiled  from  the  last  biennial 
report  of  the  State  Fish  and  Game  Commissioner: 

Damages  Paid  for  Deer  Depredations  in  Vermont  During 

Two   Years 

Total  damages  paid  from  June  8,  1908,  to  June  22,  1910 $4,865.98 

Total  number  of  claims  paid 311 

Total  number  of  claims  under  $5 80 

Number  between  $5  and  $10,  inclusive 102 

Number  over  $25  and  under  $51 23 

Number  between  $50  and  $100 11 

Number  in  excess  of  $100 4 

Number  in  excess  of  $200 1 

Largest  claim  paid $326.50 

Value  of  White-Tailed  Deer. — Having  noted  the  fact  that  in  two 
years  (1908-9),  the  people  of  Vermont  paid  out  $4,865  in  compensation 
for  damages  inflicted  by  deer,  it  is  of  interest  to  determine  whether  that 
money  was  wisely  expended.    In  other  words,  did  it  pay? 

We  have  seen  that  in  the  years  1908  and  9,  the  people  of  Vermont 
killed,  legally  and  illegally,  and  converted  to  use,  7,186  deer.  This  does 
not  include  the  deer  killed  by  dogs  and  by  accidents. 

Regarding  the  value  of  a  full-grown  deer,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  much  depends  upon  the  locality  of  the  carcass.  In  New  York  or 
Pittsburg  or  Chicago,  a  whole  deer  is  worth,  at  wholesale,  at  least  twenty- 
five  dollars.  In  Vermont,  where  deer  are  plentiful,  they  are  worth  a  less 
sum.  I  think  that  fifteen  dollars  would  be  a  fair  figure, — at  least  low 
enough ! 

Even  when  computed  at  fifteen  dollars  per  carcass,  those  deer  were 
worth  to  the  people  of  Vermont  $107,790.  It  would  seem,  therefore, 
that  the  soundness  of  Vermont's  policy  leaves  no  room  for  argument; 
and  we  hope  that  other  states,  and  also  private  individuals,  will  profit 
by  Vermont's  very  successful  experiment  in  bringing  back  the  deer  to 
her  forests,  and  in  increasing  the  food  supply  of  her  people. 

Killing  Female  Deer. — To  say  one  word  on  this  subject  which 
might  by  any  possibility  be  construed  as  favoring  it,  is  like  juggling  with 
a  lighted  torch  over  a  barrel  of  gunpowder.  Already,  in  Pennsylvania 
at  least  one  gentleman  has  appeared  anxious  to  represent  me  as  favoring 
the  killing  of  does,  which  in  nine  hundred  and  ninty-nine  cases  out  of 
every  thousand  I  distinctly  and  emphatically  do  not.  The  slaughter 
of  female  hoofed  game  animals  is  necessarily  destructive  and  repre- 
hensible, and  not  one  man  out  of  every  ten  thousand  in  this  country  e\'er 
will  see  the  place  and  time  wherein  the  opposite  is  true. 


242  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

At  present  there  are  just  two  places  in  America,  and  I  think  only  two, 
wherein  there  exists  the  sHghtest  exception  on  this  point.  The  state  of 
Vermont  is  becoming  overstocked  with  deer,  and  the  females  have  in 
some  counties  (not  in  all),  become  so  tame  and  destructive  in  orchards, 
gardens  and  farm  crops  as  to  constitute  a  great  annoyance.  For  this 
reason,  the  experiment  is  being  made  of  permitting  does  to  be  killed  under 
license,  until  their  number  is  somewhat  reduced. 

The  first  returns  from  this  trial  have  now  come  in,  from  the  county 
game  wardens  of  Vermont  to  the  state  game  warden,  Mr.  John  W.  Tit- 
comb.     I  will  quote  the  gist  of  the  opinion  of  each. 

The  State  Commissioner  says:  "This  law  should  remain  in  force  at 
least  until  there  is  some  indication  of  a  decrease  in  the  number  of  deer." 
Warden  W.  H.  Taft  (Addison  County)  says:  "The  killing  of  does  I 
believe  did  away  with  a  good  many  of  these  tame  deer  that  cause  most 
of  the  damage  to  farmers'  crops."  Harry  Chase  (Bennington  County) 
says  the  doe-killing  law  is  "  a  good  law,  and  I  sincerely  trust  it  will  not 
be  repealed. ' '  Warden  Hay  ward  of  Rutland  County  says :  ' '  The  majority 
of  the  farmers  in  this  county  are  in  favor  of  repealing  the  doe  law.  ...  A 
great  many  does  and  young  deer  (almost  fawns)  were  killed  in  this  county 
during  the  hunting  season  of  1909."  R.  W.  Wheeler,  of  Rutland  County 
says :  "Have  the  doe  law  repealed !  We  don't  need  it ! "  H.J.  Parcher  of 
Washington  County  finds  that  the  does  did  more  damage  to  the  crops 
than  the  bucks,  and  he  thinks  the  doe  law  is  "a  just  one."  R.  L.  Frost, 
of  Windham  County,  judicially  concludes  that  "the  law  allowing  does 
to  be  killed  should  remain  in  force  one  or  two  seasons  more."  C.  S 
Parker,  of  Orleans  County,  saj^s  his  county  is  not  overstocked  with  deer, 
and  he  favors  a  special  act  for  his  county,  to  protect  females. 

A  summary  of  the  testimony  of  the  wardens  is  easily  made.  When 
deer  are  too  plentiful,  and  the  over-tame  does  become  a  public  nuisance 
too  great  to  be  endured,  the  number  should  be  reduced  by  regular  shoot- 
ing in  the  open  season;    but. 

As  soon  as  the  proper  balance  of  deer  life  has  been  restored,  protect 
the  does  once  more. 

The  pursuit  of  this  policy  is  safe  and  sane,  provided  it  can  be  wrought 
out  without  the  influence  of  selfishness,  and  reckless  disregard  for  the 
rights  of  the  next  generation.  On  the  whole,  its  handling  is  like  playing 
with  fire,  and  I  think  there  are  very,  very  few  states  on  this  earth  wherein 
it  would  be  wise  or  safe  to  try  it.  As  a  wise  friend  once  remarked  to  me, 
"Give  some  men  a  hinch,  and  they'll  alwaj^s  try  to  take  a  hell."  In 
Vermont,  however,  the  situation  is  kept  so  well  in  hand  we  may  be  sure 
that  at  the  right  moment  the  law  providing  for  the  decrease  of  the  number 
of  does  will  be  repealed. 

Hippopotami  and  Antelopes. — Last  year  a  bill  was  introduced  in 
the  lower  House  of  Congress  proposing  to  provide  funds  for  the  intro- 
duction into  certain  southern  states  of  various  animals  from  Africa, 
especially  hippopotami  and  African  antelopes.  The  former  were  proposed 
partly  for  the  purpose  of  ridding  navigation  of  the  water  hyacinths  that 


GAME  AND  AGRICULTURE;  DEER   AS   FOOD  243 

now  are  choking  many  of  the  streams  of  Louisiana  and  Mississippi. 
The  antelopes  were  to  be  accHmatized  as  a  food  supply  for  the  people 
at  large. 

This  measure  well  illustrates  the  prevailing  disposition  of  the  American 
people  to-day, — -to  ignore  and  destroy  their  own  valuable  natural  stock 
of  wild  birds  and  mammals,  and  when  they  have  completed  their  war  of 
extermination,  reach  out  to  foreign  countries  for  foreign  species.  In- 
stead of  preserving  the  deer  of  the  South,  the  South  reaches  out  for  the 
utterly  impossible  antelopes  of  Africa,  and  the  preposterous  hippopota- 
mus. The  North  joyously  exterminates  her  quail  and  ruffed  grouse,  and 
goes  to  Europe  for  the  Hungarian  partridge.  That  partridge  is  a  failure 
here,  and  I  am  heartily  glad  oj  it,  on  the  ground  that  the  exterminators 
of  our  native  species  do  not  deserve  success  in  their  efforts  to  displace 
our  finest  native  species  with  others  from  abroad. 

The  hippo-antelope  proposition  is  a  climax  of  absurdity,  in  proposing 
the  replacing  of  valuable  native  game  with  impossible  foreign  species. 


CHAPTER  XXV 
LAW  AND  SENTIMENT  AS  FACTORS  IN  PRESERVATION 

There  is  grave  danger  that  through  ignorance  of  the  true  character 
of  about  80  per  cent  of  the  men  and  boys  who  shoot  wild  creatures,  a 
great  wrong  will  be  done  the  latter.    Let  us  not  make  a  fatal  mistake. 

After  more  than  thirty  years  of  observation  among  all  kinds  of  sports- 
men, hunters  and  gunners,  I  am  convinced  that  it  is  utterly  futile  and 
deadly  dangerous  to  rely  on  humane,  high-class  sentiment  to  diminish 
the  slaughter  of  wild  things  by  game-hogs  and  pot-hunters. 

In  some  respects,  the  term  "game-hog"  is  a  rude,  rough  word;  but 
it  is  needed  in  the  English  language,  and  it  has  come  to  stay.  It  is  a 
disagreeable  term,  but  it  was  brought  into  use  to  apply  to  a  class  of  very 
disagreeable  persons. 

A  "game-hog"  is  a  hunter  of  game  who  knows  no  such  thing  as 
sentiment  or  conscience  in  the  killing  of  game,  so  long  as  he  keeps  within 
the  limit  of  the  law.  Regardless  of  the  scarcity  of  game,  or  of  its  hard 
struggle  for  existence,  he  will  kill  right  up  to  the  bag  limit  every  day  that 
he  goes  out,  provided  it  is  possible  to  do  so.  He  uses  the  "law"  as  a 
salve  for  the  spot  where  his  conscience  should  be.  He  will  shoot  with 
any  machine  gun,  or  gun  of  big  calibre,  in  every  way  that  the  law  allows, 
and  he  knows  no  such  thing  as  giving  the  game  a  square  deal.  He  brags 
of  his  big  bags  of  game,  and  he  loves  to  be  photographed  with  a  wagon- 
load  of  dead  birds  as  a  background.  He  believes  in  automatic  and  pump 
guns,  spring  shooting,  longer  open  seasons  and  "more  game."  He  is 
quite  content  to  shoot  half  tame  ducks  in  a  club  preserve  as  they  fly  be- 
tween coop  and  pond,  whenever  he  secures  an  opportunity.  He  will 
gladly  sell  his  game  whenever  he  can  do  so  without  being  found  out,  and 
sometimes  when  he  is. 

Often  a  true  sportsman  drifts  without  realizing  it  into  some  one  way 
of  the  confirmed  game-hog;  but  the  moment  he  is  made  to  realize  his 
position,  he  changes  his  course  and  his  standing.  The  game-hog  is  im- 
pervious to  argument.  You  can  shame  a  horse  away  from  his  oats  more 
easily  than  you  can  shame  him  from  doing  "what  the  Law  allows." 

There  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen  who 
never  once  have  come  in  touch  with  real  cloven-footed  game-hogs,  who 
do  not  understand  the  species  at  all,  and  do  not  recognize  its  ear-marks. 
Thousands  of  such  persons  will  tell  you:  "In  my  opinion,  the  best  way 
to  save  the  wild  life  is  to  educate  the  people!"  I  have  heard  that,  many, 
many  times. 

For  right-hearted  people,  a  little  law  is  quite  sufficient;   and  the  best 


LAW  AND   SENTIMENT  IN    PRESERVATION  245 

people  need  none  at  all!  But  the  game-hogs  are  different.  For  them, 
the  strict  letter  of  the  law,  backed  up  by  a  strong-arm  squad,  is  the  only- 
controlling  influence  that  they  recognize.  To  them  it  is  necessary  to 
say :    ' '  You  shall ! ' '  and  ' '  You  shall  not ! ' ' 

Only  yesterday  the  latest  game-hog  case  was  related  to  me  by  a 
game-protector  from  Kansas.  Into  a  certain  county  of  southern  Kansas, 
from  which  the  prairie-chicken  had  been  totally  gone  for  a  dozen  years 
■or  more,  a  pair  of  those  birds  entered,  settled  down  and  nested.  Their 
coming  was  to  many  habitants  a  joyous  event.  "  Now,"  said  the  People, 
"we  will  care  for  these  birds,  and  they  will  multiply,  and  presently  the 
county  will  be  restocked." 

But  Ahab  came!  Two  men  from  another  county,  calling  themselves 
sportsmen  but  not  entitled  to  that  name,  heard  of  those  birds,  and  re- 
solved to  "get  them."  They  waited  until  the  young  were  just  leaving 
the  nest:  and  they  went  down  and  camped  near  by.  On  the  first  day 
they  killed  the  two  parent  birds  and  half  the  flock  of  young  birds,  and 
the  next  day  they  got  all  the  rest. 

But  there  is  a  sequel  to  this  story.  One  of  those  men  was  a  dealer  in 
guns  and  ammunition;  and  when  his  customers  heard  what  he  had  done, 
"they  simply  put  him  out  of  business,  by  refusing  to  trade  with  him  any 
more."  He  is  now  washing  dirty  dishes  in  a  restaurant;  but  at  heart 
he  is  a  game-hog,  just  the  same. 

Near  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  a  gentleman  of  my  acquaintance 
owns  a  fine  estate  which  is  adorned  with  a  trout  stream  and  a  superfine 
trout  pond.  Once  he  invited  a  business  man  of  Bridgeport  to  be  his 
^uest,  and  fish  for  trout  in  his  pond.  On  that  guest,  during  a  visit  of 
three  days  all  the  finest  forms  of  hospitality  were  bestowed. 

Two  weeks  later,  my  friend's  game- warden  caught  that  guest,  early 
•on  a  Sunday  morning,  poaching  on  the  trout-pond,  and  spoiled  his  care- 
fully arranged  get-away. 

In  his  book  "Saddle  and  Camp  in  the  Rockies,"  Mr.  Dillon  Wallace 
tells  a  story  of  a  man  from  New  York  who  in  the  mountains  of  Colorado 
•deliberately  corrupted  his  guides  with  money  or  other  influences,  shot 
mountain  sheep  in  midsummer,  and  "got  away  with  it." 

In  northern  Minnesota,  George  E.  Wood  has  been  having  a  hand-to- 
Tiand  fight .  with  the  worst  community  of  game-hogs  and  alien-born 
poachers  of  which  I  have  heard.  There  appears  to  be  no  game  law  that 
they  do  not  systematically  violate.  The  killers  seem  determined  to 
annihilate  the  last  head  of  game,  in  spite  of  fines  and  imprisonments. 
The  foreigners  are  absolutely  uncontrollable.  The  latest  feature  of  the 
war  is  the  discovery  of  a  tannery  in  the  woods,  where  the  hides  of  illegally- 
slaughtered  deer  and  moose  are  dressed.  Apparently  the  only  kind  of  a 
law  that  will  save  the  game  of  northern  Minnesota  is  one  that  will  totally 
•disarm  the  entire  population. 

■   In  Pennsylvania,  there  exists  an  association  which  was  formed  for 
the  express  purpose  of  fighting  the  vState  Game  Commission,  preventing 


246  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

the  enactment  of  a  hunter's  license  law  and  repealing  the  law  against 
the  killing  of  female  deer  and  hornless  fawns.  The  continued  existence 
of  that  organization  on  that  basis  would  be  a  standing  disgrace  to  the 
fair  name  of  Pennsylvania.  I  think,  however,  that  that  organization 
was  founded  on  secret  selfish  purposes,  and  that  ere  long  the  general 
body  of  members  will  awaken  to  a  realizing  sense  of  their  position,  and 
range  themselves  in  support  of  the  excellent  policies  of  the  commission. 

A  PoT-HuNTER  is  a  man  or  boy  who  kills  game  as  a  business,  for  the 
money  that  can  be  derived  from  its  sale,  or  other  use.  vSuch  men  have  the 
same  feelings  as  butchers.  From  their  point  of  view,  they  can  see  no 
reason  why  all  the  game  in  the  world  should  not  be  killed  and  marketed. 
Like  the  feather-dealers,  they  wish  to  get  out  of  the  wild  life  all  the  money 
there  is  in  it;  that  is  all.  Left  to  themselves,  with  open  markets  they 
would  soon  exterminate  the  land  fauna  of  the  habitable  portions  of  the 
globe. 

No  one  can  "educate"  such  people.  For  the  gunners,  game-hogs 
and  pot-hunters,  there  is  no  check,  save  specific  laws  that  sternly  and 
amply  safeguard  the  rights  of  the  wild  creatures  that  can  not  make  laws 
for  themselves. 

Nor  can  anyone  educate  the  heartless  woman  of  fashion  who  is  de- 
termined to  wear  aigrettes  as  long  as  her  money  can  buy  them.  The  best 
women  of  the  world  have  already  been  educated  on  the  bird-millinery 
subject,  and  they  are  already  against  the  use  of  the  gaudy  badges  of 
slaughter  and  extermination.  But  in  the  great  cities  of  the  world  there 
are  thousands  of  women  who  are  at  heart  as  cruel  as  Salome  herself,  and 
whose  vicious  tastes  can  be  curbed  only  by  the  strong  hand  of  the  law. 
"Sentiment "  for  wild  birds  is  not  in  them. 

Because  of  the  vicious  and  heartless  elements  among  men  and  women, 
we  say,  Give  us  far-reaching,  iron-bound  laws  for  the  protection  of  wild  life, 
and  plenty  of  courageous  men  to  enforce  them. 


CHAPTER  XXVr 

THE  ARMY  OF  THE  DEFENSE 

It  now  seems  that  the  friends  of  wild  life  who  themselves  are  not  on 
the  firing-line  should  be  afforded  some  definite  information  regarding  the 
Army  of  the  Defense,  and  its  strength  and  weakness.  It  is  an  interesting 
subject,  but  the  limitations  of  space  will  not  permit  an  extended  treatment. 

Over  the  world  at  large,  I  think  the  active  Destroyers  outnumber 
the  active  Defenders  of  wild  life  at  least  in  the  ratio  of  500  to  1 ;  and  the 
money  available  to  the  Destroyers  is  to  the  funds  of  the  Defenders  as 
500  is  to  1.  The  average  big-game  sportsman  cheerfully  expends  from 
$500  to  $1,000  on  a  hunting  trip,  but  resents  the  suggestion  that  he  should 
subscribe  from  $50  to  $100  for  wild  life  preservation.  If  he  puts  down 
$10,  he  thinks  he  has  done  a  Big  Thing.  Worse  than  this,  I  am  forced 
to  believe  that  at  least  75  per  cent  of  the  big-game  sportsmen  of  the 
world  never  have  contributed  one  dollar  in  money,  or  one  hour  of  effort, 
to  that  cause.  But  there  are  exceptions;  and  I  can  name  at  least  fifty 
sportsmen  who  have  subscribed  $100  each  to  campaign  funds,  and  some 
who  have  given  as  high  as  $1,000. 

Once  I  sat  down  beside  a  financially  rich  slaughterer  of  game,  and 
asked  him  to  subscribe  a  sum  of  real  money  in  behalf  of  a  very  important 
campaign.  I  needed  funds  very  much;  and  I  explained,  exhorted  and 
besought.  I  pointed  out  his  duty — to  give  back  something  in  return  for 
all  the  game  slaughter  that  he  had  enjoyed.  For  ten  long  minutes  he 
stood  fire  without  flinching,  and  without  once  opening  his  lips  to  speak. 
He  made  no  answer  no  argument,  no  defense  and  finally  he  never  gave 
up  one  cent. 

Wherever  the  English  language  is  spoken,  from  Tasmania  to  Scotland, 
and  from  Porto  Rico  to  the  Philippines,  the  spirit  of  wild  life  protection 
exists.  Elsewhere  there  is  much  more  to  be  said  on  this  point.  To  all 
cosmopolitan  sportsmen,  the  British  "Blue  Book"  on  game  protection, 
the  annual  reports  of  the  two  great  protective  societies  of  London,  and 
the  annual  "  Progress"  report  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture  are 
reassuring  and  comforting.  It  is  good  to  know  that  Uganda  maintains 
a  Department  of  Game  Protection  (A.  L.  Butler,  Superintendent),  that 
so  good  a  man  as  Maj.  J.  Stevenson-Hamilton  is  in  control  of  protection 
in  the  Transvaal,  and  that  even  the  native  State  of  Kashmir  officially 
recognizes  the  need  to  protect  the  Remnant. 

There  are  of  course  many  parts  of  the  world  in  which  game  laws  and 
limits  to  slaughter  are  quite  imknown :  all  of  which  is  entirely  wrong,  and 
in  need  of  quick  correction.     No  state  or  nation  can  be  accounted  wholly 


248  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

civilized  that  fails  to  recognize  the  necessity  to  protect  wild  life.  I  anii 
tempted  to  make  a  list  of  the  states  and  nations  that  were  at  latest 
advices  destitute  of  game  laws  and  game  protectors,  but  I  fear  to  da 
injustice  through  lack  of  the  latest  information.  However,  the  time  has 
come  to  search  out  delinquents,  and  hold  up  to  each  one  a  mirror  that  will 
reflect  its  shortcomings. 

Naturally,  we  are  most  interested  in  our  own  contingent  of  the  Army- 
of  the  Defense. 

The  United  States  Government. — To-day  the  feeHng  in  Congress-. 
toward  the  conservation  of  wild  life  and  forests  is  admirable.  Both, 
houses  are  fully  awake  to  the  necessity  of  saving  while  there  is  yet  some- 
thing to  be  saved.  The  people  of  the  United  States  may  be  assured  that 
the  national  government  is  active  and  sympathetic  in  the  prosecution 
of  such  conservation  measures  as  it  might  justly  be  expected  to  promote. 
For  example,  during  the  past  five  years  we  have  seen  Congress  take 
favorable  action  on  the  following  important  causes,  nearly  every  one  of 
which  cost  money: 

The  saving  of  the  American  bison,  in  four  National  ranges. 

The  creation  of  fifty-eight  bird  refuges. 

The  creation  of  five  great  game  preserves. 

The  saving  of  the  elk  in  Jackson  Hole. 

The  protection  of  the  fur  seal. 

The  protection  of  the  wild  life  of  Alaska. 

There  are  many  active  friends  of  wild  life  who  confidently  expect  to 
see  this  fine  list  gloriously  rounded  out  by  the  passage  in  1913  of  an 
ideal  bill  for  the  federal  protection  of  all  migratory  birds.  To  name  the 
friends  of  wild  life  in  Congress  would  require  the  printing  of  a  list  of  at 
least  two  hundred  names,  and  a  history  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  wild 
life  conservation  by  the  national  government  would  fill  a  volume.  Such 
a  volume  would  be  highly  desirable. 

When  the  story  of  the  national  government's  part  in  wild-life  pro- 
tection is  finally  written,  it  will  be  found  that  while  he  was  president, 
Theodore  Roosevelt  made  a  record  in  that  field  that  is  indeed  enough  to 
make  a  reign  illustrious.  He  aided  every  wild-life  cause  that  lay  within 
the  bounds  of  possibility,  and  he  gave  the  vanishing  birds  and  mammals 
the  benefit  of  every  doubt.  He  helped  to  establish  three  national  bison 
herds,  four  national  game  preserves,  fifty-three  federal  bird  refuges,  and 
to  enact  the  Alaska  game  laws  of  1902  and  1907. 

It  was  in  1904  that  the  national  government  elected  to  accept  its 
share  of  the  white  man's  burden  and  enter  actively  into  the  practical 
business  of  wild  life  protection.  This  special  work,  originally  undertaken 
and  down  to  the  present  vigorously  carried  on  by  Dr.  Theodore  S.  Palmer, 
has  considerably  changed  the  working  policy  of  the  Biological  Survey  of 
the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  greatly  influenced  game  protection 
throughout  the  states.  The  game  protection  work  of  that  bureau  is 
alone  worth  to  the  people  of  this  country  at  least  twenty  times  more  per 


MADISON   GRANT 

Secretary  and  Chairman  Executive  Committee, 

New  York  Zoological  Society 


HENRY  FAIRFIELD  OSBORN 

President,  New  York  Zoological 

Society 


JOHN  F.  LACEY 

Ex-Member  of  Congress;  Author  of  the 

"Lacey  Bird  Law" 

WILLIAM  DUTCHER 
Founder  and  President,  National  Association 

of  Audubon  Societies 

MOTABLE   PROTECTORS  OF   WILD    LIFE     (I) 


250  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

annum  than  the  entire  annual  cost  of  the  Bureau.  Next  to  the  splendid 
services  of  Dr.  Palmer,  all  over  the  United  States,  one  great  value  of  the 
Bureau  is  found  in  the  fact-and-figure  ammunition  that  it  prepares  and 
distributes  for  general  use  in  assaults  on  the  citadels  of  Ignorance  and 
Greed.  The  publications  of  the  Bureau  are  of  great  practical  value  to 
the  people  of  the  United  States. 

Dr.  Palmer  is  a  man  of  incalculable  value  to  the  cause  of  protection. 
No  call  for  advice  is  too  small  to  receive  his  immediate  attention,  no 
fight  is  too  hot  and  no  danger-point  too  remote  to  keep  him  from  the  fray. 
Wherever  the  Army  of  Destruction  is  making  a  particularly  dangerous 
fight  to  repeal  good  laws  and  turn  back  the  wheels  of  progress,  there  will 
he  be  found.  As  the  warfare  grows  more  intense,  Congress  may  find  it 
necessary  to  enlarge  the  fighting  force  of  the  Biological  Survey. 

The  work  that  has  been  done  by  the  Bureau  in  determining  the 
economic  value  or  lack  of  value  of  our  most  important  species  of  insectiv- 
orous birds,  has  been  worth  millions  to  the  agricultural  interests  of  the 
United  States.  Through  it  we  know  where  we  stand.  The  reasons  why 
we  need  to  strive  for  protection  can  be  expressed  in  figures  and  percent- 
ages ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  they  leave  the  American  people  no  option 
but  to  protect! 

State  Game  Commissions. — Each  of  our  states,  and  each  province 
of  Canada,  maintains  either  a  State  Game  Commission  of  several  persons, 
one  Commissioner,  or  a  State  Game  Warden.  All  such  officers  are 
officially  charged  with  the  duty  of  looking  after  the  general  welfare  of  the 
game  and  other  wild  life  of  their  respective  states.  Theoretically  one 
of  the  chief  duties  of  a  State  Game  Commission  is  to  initiate  new  legis- 
lative bills  that  are  necessary,  and  advocate  their  translation  into  law. 
The  official  standing  of  most  game  commissioners  is  such  that  they  can 
successfully  do  this.  In  1909  Governor  Hughes  of  New  York  went  so 
far  as  to  let  it  be  known  that  he  would  sign  no  new  game  bill  that  did  not 
meet  the  approval  of  State  Game  Commissioner  James  S.  Whipple.  As 
a  general  working  principle,  and  quite  aside  from  Mr.  Whipple,  that  was 
wrong;  because  even  a  State  game  commissioner  is  not  necessarily 
infallible,  or  always  on  the  right  side  of  every  wild-life  question. 

As  a  rule,  state  commissioners  and  state  wardens  are  keenly  alive  to 
the  needs  of  their  states  in  new  game  protective  legislation,  and  a  large 
percentage  of  the  best  existing  laws  are  due  to  their  initiative.  Often, 
however,  their  usefulness  is  limited  by  the  trammels  of  public  office,  and 
there  are  times  when  such  officers  can  not  be  too  aggressive  without  the 
risk  of  arousing  hostile  influences,  and  handicapping  their  own  depart- 
mental work.  For  this  reason^  it  is  often  advisable  that  bills  which 
propose  great  and  drastic  reforms,  and  which  are  likely  to  become  storm- 
centers,  should  originate  outside  the  Commissioner's  office,  and  be  pushed 
by  men  who  are  perfectly  free  to  abide  the  fortunes  of  open  warfare.  It 
should  be  distinctly  understood,  however,  that  lobbying  in  behalf  of 
udld-life  measures  is  an  important  part  of  the  legitimate  duty  of  every  state 
game  commissioner,  and  is  a  most  honorable  calling. 


EDWARD  HOWE  FORBUSH 

Massachusetts  State 
Ornithologist 

T.  GILBERT  PEARSON 

Secretary,  National  Association  of 
Audubon  Societies 

JOHN  B.  BURNHAM 

President,  American  Game  Protective  and 

[Propagation  Association 


ERNEST  NAPIER 

President,  Fish  and  Game  Commission 

of  New  Jersey 


NOTABLE    PROTECTORS   OF   WILD   LIFE      IL 


252  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Of  the  many  strong  and  aggressive  state  game  commissions  that  I 
would  Hke  to  mention  in  detail,  space  permits  the  naming  of  only  a  very 
few,  by  way  of  illustration. 

New  York. — Thanks  to  the  great  conservation  Governor  of  this 
state,  John  A.  Dix,  the  year  1911  saw  our  forest,  fish  and  game  business 
established  on  an  ideal  business  basis.  Realizing  the  folly  of  requiring 
a  single  man  to  manage  those  three  great  interests,  and  render  to  each  the 
attention  that  it  deserves  and  requires,  by  a  well-studied  legislative  act 
a  State  Conservation  Commission  was  created,  consisting  of  three  com- 
missioners, one  for  each  of  the  three  great  natural  departments.  These 
are  salaried  officers,  who  devote  their  entire  time  to  their  work,  and  are 
properly  equipped  with  assistants.  The  state  force  of  game  wardens  now 
consists  of  125  picked  men,  each  on  a  salary  of  $900  per  year,  and  through 
a  rigid  system  of  daily  reports  (inaugurated  by  John  B.  Burnham)  the 
activities  and  results  of  each  warden  promptly  become  known  in  detail 
at  headquarters. 

Fortunately,  New  York  contains  a  very  large  number  of  true  sports- 
men, who  are  ever  ready  to  come  forward  in  support  of  every  great 
measure  for  wild-life  protection.  The  spirit  of  real  protection  runs 
throughout  the  state,  and  in  time  I  predict  that  it  will  result  in  a  great 
recovery  of  the  native  game  of  the  commonwealth.  That  will  be  after 
we  have  stopped  all  shooting  of  upland  game  birds  and  shore  birds  for 
about  eight  years.  Even  the  pinnated  grouse  could  be  successfully 
introduced  over  one-third  of  the  state,  if  the  people  would  have  it  so.  It  was 
our  great  body  of  conscientious  sportsmen  who  made  possible  the  Bayne- 
Blauvelt  law,  and  the  new  codification    of  the  game  laws  of  the  state. 

Tennessee. — Clearly,  Honorable  Mention  belongs  to  the  unsalaried 
State  Commissioner  of  Tennessee,  Col.  J.  H.  Acklen,  "than  whom,"  says 
Dr.  Palmer,  ' '  there  is  no  more  active  and  enthusiastic  game  protectionist 
in  this  country.  Whatever  has  been  accomplished  in  that  state  is  due 
to  his  activity  and  public  spirit.  Col.  Acklen,  who  is  now  president  of  the 
National  Association  of  Game  Commissioners,  is  a  prominent  lawyer, 
and  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  commissioner  in  the  country 
who  not  only  serves  without  pay,  but  also  defrays  a  large  part  of  the 
expenses  of  game  protection  out  of  his  own  pocket." 

Surely  the  Commonwealth  of  Tennessee  will  not  long  permit  this 
unsupported  condition  of  such  a  game  commissioner  to  endure.  That 
state  has  a  wild  fauna  worth  preserving  for  her  sons  and  grandsons,  and 
it  is  inconceivable  that  the  funds  vitally  necessary  to  this  public  service 
can  not  be  found. 

Alabama. — I  cite  the  case  of  Alabama  because,  in  view  of  its  position 
in  a  group  of  states  that  .until  recently  have  cared  little  about  game  pro- 
tection, it  may  be  regarded  as  an  unusual  case.  Commissioner  John  H. 
Wallace,  Jr.,  has  evolved  order  out  of  chaos, — and  something  approaching 
a  reign  of  law  out  of  the  absence  of  law.  To-day  the  State  of  Alabama 
stands  as  an  example  of  what  can  be  accomplished  by  and  through  one 
clear-headed,  determined  man  who  is  right,  and  knows  that  he  is  right. 


THE  ARMY  OF  THE  DEFENSE  253 

New  Jersey.- — Alabama  reminds  one  of  New  Jersey,  and  of  State 
Game  Commissioner  Ernest  Napier.  I  have  seen  him  on  the  firing-line, 
and  I  know  that  his  strong  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  wild  life  of  his 
state,  his  determination  to  protect  it  at  all  costs,  and  his  resistless  con- 
fidence in  asking  for  what  is  right,  have  made  him  a  power  for  good.  The 
state  legislature  believes  in  him,  and  enacts  the  laws  that  he  says  are  right 
and  necessary.  He  serves  without  salary,  and  gives  to  the  state  time, 
labor  and  money.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  work  with  such  a  man.  In  1912 
Commissioner  Napier  won  a  pitched  battle  with  the  makers  of  auto- 
matic and  puinp  guns,  both  shotguns  and  rifles,  and  debarred  all  those 
weapons  from  use  in  hunting  in  New  Jersey  unless  satisfactorily  reduced 
to  two  shots. 

Massachusetts. — The  state  of  Massachusetts  is  fortunate  in  the 
possession  of  a  very  fine  corps  of  ornithologists,  nature  lovers,  sportsmen 
and  leading  citizens  who  on  all  questions  affecting  wild  life  occupy  high 
ground  and  are  not  afraid  to  maintain  it.  It  would  be  a  pleasure  to  write 
an  entire  chapter  on  this  subject.  The  record  of  the  Massachusetts 
Army  of  the  Defense  is  both  an  example  and  an  inspiraion  to  the  people 
of  other  states.  Not  only  is  the  cause  of  protection  championed  by  the 
State  Game  Commission  but  it  also  receives  constant  and  powerful 
support  from  the  State  Board  of  Agriculture,  which  maintains  on  its  staff 
Mr.  E.  H.  Forbush  as  State  Ornithologist.  The  bird-protection  publica- 
tions of  the  Board  are  of  great  economic  value,  and  they  are  also  an  ever- 
lasting credit  to  the  state.  The  very  latest  is  a  truly  great  wild-life- 
protection  volume  of  607  pages,  by  Mr.  Forbush,  entitled  ''Game  Birds, 
Wild-Fowl  and  Shore  Birds."  It  is  a  publication  most  damaging  to  the 
cause  of  the  Army  of  Destruction,  and  I  heartily  wish  a  million  copies 
might  be  printed  and  placed  in  the  hands  of  lawmakers  and  protectors. 

The  fight  last  winter  and  spring  for  a  no-sale-of-game  law  was  the 
Gettysburg  for  Massachusetts.  The  voice  of  the  People  was  heard  in 
no  uncertain  tones,  and  the  Destroyers  were  routed  all  along  the  line. 
The  leaders  in  that  struggle  on  the  protection  side  were  E.  H.  Forbush, 
William  P.  Wharton,  Dr.  George  W.  Field,  Edward  N.  Coding,  Lyman 
E.  Hurd,  Ralph  Holman,  Rev.  Wm.  R.  Lord  and  vSalemi  D.  Charles. 
With  such  leaders  and  such  supporters,  any  wild-life  cause  can  be  won, 
an^^where ! 

Pennsylvania. — The  case  of  Pennsylvania  is  rather  peculiar.  As 
yet  there  is  no  large  and  resistless  organized  body  of  real  sportsmen  to 
rally  to  the  support  of  the  State  Game  Commission  in  great  causes,  as 
is  the  case  in  New  York.  As  a  result,  with  a  paltry  fund  of  only  $20,000 
for  annual  maintenance,  and  much  opposition  from  hunters  and  farmers, 
the  situation  is  far  from  satisfactory.  Fortuntely  Dr.  Joseph  Kalbfus, 
Secretary  of  the  Commission  and  chief  executive  officer,  is  a  man  of 
indomitable  courage  and  determination.  But  for  this  state  of  mind  he 
would  ere  this  have  given  up  the  fight  for  the  hunter's  license  law  (of 
one  dollar  per  year),  which  has  been  bitterly  opposed  by  a  very  aggres- 
sive and  noisy  group  of  gimners  who  do  not  seem  to  know  that  they  are 
grievously  misled.. 


254  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Fortunately,  Commissioner  John  M.  Phillips,  of  Pittsburgh  is  the 
ardent  supporter  of  Dr.  Kalbfus  and  a  vigorous  fighter  for  justice  to 
wild  life.  He  devotes  to  the  cause  a  great  amount  of  time  and  effort, 
and  in  addition  to  serving  without  salary  he  pays  all  his  campaign 
expenses  out  of  his  own  pocket.  His  only  recompense  for  all  this  is 
the  sincere  admiration  of  his  friends,  and  the  consciousness  of  having 
done  his  full  duty  toward  the  wild  life  and  the  people  of  his  native 
state. 

The  State  Audubon  Societies. — It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the 
full  value  of  the  influence  and  work  of  the  State  Audubon  Societies  of 
the  United  States.  Thus  far  these  societies  exist  in  thirty-nine  states. 
From  the  beginning,  their  efforts  have  tended  especially  toward  the  pre- 
servation of  the  non-game  birds,  and  it  is  well  that  the  song  and  other 
insectivorous  birds  have  thus  been  specially  championed.  Unfortu- 
nately, however,  if  that  policy  is  pursued  exclusively,  it  leaves  154  very 
important  species  of  game  birds  practically  at  the  mercy  of  the  Army  of 
Destruction!  It  would  seem  that  the  time  has  come  when  all  Audubon 
Societies  should  take  up,  as  a  part  of  their  work,  active  co-operation  in 
helping  to  save  the  game  birds  from  extermination. 

The  National  Organizations  of  New  York  City 

On  January  1,  1895,  the  United  States  of  America  contained,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  not  one  organization  of  national  scope  which  was  devoting 
any  large  amount  of  its  resources  and  activities  to  the  protection  of  wild 
life.  At  that  time  the  former  activities  of  the  A.O.U.  Committee  on 
Bird  Protection  had  lapsed.  To-day  the  city  of  New  York  contains  six 
national  organizations,  and  it  is  now  a  great  center  of  nation-wide 
activities  in  behalf  of  preservation.  Furtherinore,  these  activities  are 
steadily  growing,  and  securing  practical  results. 

The  New  York  Zoological  Society. — In  1895  there  was  born  into 
the  world  a  scientific  organization  having  for  its  second  declared  object 
"the  preservation  of  our  native  animals."  It  was  the  first  scientific 
society  or  corporation  ever  formed,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  having  a 
specifically  declared  object  of  that  kind.  It  owes  its  existence  and  its 
presence  in  the  field  of  wild-life  conservation  to  the  initiative  and 
persistence  of  Mr.  Madison  Grant  and  Prof.  Henry  Fairfield  Osborn. 
For  sixteen  years  these  two  officers  have  worked  together  virtually  as 
one  man.  It  is  not  strange  to  find  a  sportsman  like  Mr.  Grant  promoting 
the  wild-life  cause,  but  it  is  a  fact  well  worthy  of  note  that  of  all  the 
zoologists  of  the  world,  Professor  Osborn  is  the  only  one  of  real  renown 
who  has  actively  and  vigorously  engaged  in  this  cause,  and  taken  a  place 
in  the  front  rank  of  the  Defenders. 

Mr.  Grant's  influence  on  the  protection  cause  has  been  strong  and 
far-reaching, — far  more  so  than  the  majority  of  his  own  friends  are  aware. 
He  has  promoted  important  protectionist  causes  from  Alaska  to  Louisiana 
and  Newfoundland,  and  helj^ed  to  win  many  important  victories. 

The  Boone  and  Crockett  Club. — This  organization  of  big  game 


JOSEPH  KALBFUS 
Chief  Game  Protector  and  Secretary,  Pennsyl- 
vania Board  of  Game  Commissioners 


JOHX  M.  PHILLIPS 

Member,  Pennsylvania  Board  of  Game 

Commissioners 


EDWARD  A.  McILHENXV 

Founder  of  Wild-Fowl  Preser\'es  in 
Louisiana 


CHARLES  WILLIS  WARD 

Founder  of  Wild-Fowl  Preser\'es  in 

Louisiana 


NOTABLE    PROTECTORS   OF   WILD   LIFE     till) 


256  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

sportsmen  was  founded  in  1885,  and  is  the  oldest  of  its  kind  in  the 
United  States.  Its  members  always  have  supported  the  cause  of  pro- 
tection, by  law  and  by  the  making  of  game  preserves.  In  all  this  work 
Mr.  George  Bird  Grinnell,  for  twenty-five  years  editor  of  Forest  and 
Stream,  has  been  an  important  factor.  As  stated  elsewhere,  the  club's 
written  and  unwritten  code  of  ethics  in  big-game  hunting  is  very  strict. 
In  course  of  time  a  Committee  on  Game  Protection  was  formed,  and  it 
actively  entered  that  field. 

The  National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies. — This  organi- 
zation was  founded  by  William  Dutcher,  in  1902,  and  in  1906  it  was 
endowed  to  the  extent  of  $322,000  by  the  bequest  of  Albert  Wilcox. 
Subsequent  endowments,  together  with  the  annual  contributions  of 
members  and  friends,  now  give  the  Association  an  annual  income  of 
§60,000.  It  maintains  eight  widely-separated  field  agents  and  lecturers 
and  forty  special  game  wardens  of  bird  refuges.  It  maintains  Secretary 
T.  Gilbert  Pearson  and  a  number  of  other  good  men  constantly  on  the 
firing-line;  and  these  forces  have  achieved  many  valuable  results.  After 
\'ears  of  stress  and  struggle,  it  now  seems  almost  certain  that  this  organi- 
zation will  save  the  two  white  egrets, — producers  of  "the  white  badge  of 
cruelty," — to  the  bird  fauna  of  the  United  States,  as  in  a  similar  manner 
it  has  saved  the  gulls,  terns  and  other  sea  birds  of  our  lakes  and  coast  line. 

This  splendid  organization  is  one  of  the  monuments  to  William 
Dutcher.  More  than  two  years  ago  he  was  stricken  with  paralysis,  and 
now  sits  in  an  invalid's  chair  at  his  home  in  Plainfield,  New  Jersey.  His 
mind  is  clear  and  his  interest  in  wild-life  protection  is  keen,  but  he  is 
unable  to  speak  or  to  write.  While  he  was  active,  he  was  one  of  the  most 
resourceful  and  fearless  champions  of  the  cause  of  the  vanishing  birds. 
To  him  the  farmers  of  America  owe  ten  times  more  than  they  ever  will 
know,  and  a  thousand  times  more  than  they  ever  will  repay,  either  to 
him  or  to  his  cause. 

The  Camp-Fire  Club  of  America. — Although  founded  in  1897, 
this  organization  did  not,  as  an  organization,  actively  enter  the  field  of 
protection  until  1909.  Since  that  time  its  work  has  covered  a  wide  field, 
and  enlisted  the  activities  of  many  of  its  members.  In  order  to  provide 
a  permanent  fund  for  its  work,  each  year  the  club  members  pay  special 
annual  dues  that  are  devoted  solely  to  the  wild-life  cause.  The  Committee 
on  Game  Protective  Legislation  and  Preserves  is  a  strong,  hard-working 
body,  and  it  has  rendered  good  service  in  the  lines  of  activity  named  in 
its  title. 

The  American  Game  Protective  and  Propagation  Association. 
— This  is  the  youngest  protective  organization  of  national  scope,  having 
been  organized  in  1911.  Its  activities  are  directed  by  John  B.  Burnham, 
for  five  years  Chief  Game  Protector  of  the  State  of  New  York,  and  a 
man  thoroughly  conversant  with  the  business  of  protection.  The 
organization  is  financed  chiefly  by  means  of  a  large  annual  fund  contrib- 
uted by  several  of  the  largest  companies  engaged  in  manufacturing 
firearms  and  ammunition,  whose  directors  feel  that  the  time  has  come 


THE  ARMY  OF   THE   DEFENSE  257 

when  it  is  both  wise  and  necessary  to  take  practical  measures  to  preserve 
the  remnant  of  American  game.  Already  the  activities  of  this  organiza- 
tion cover  a  wide  range,  and  it  has  been  particularly  active  in  enlisting 
support  for  the  Weeks  bill  for  the  federal  protection  of  migratory  birds. 

The  Wild  Life  Protective  Association  came  into  existence  in 
1910,  rather  suddenly,  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  the  cause  of  the 
Bayne  no-sale-of-game  bill,  and  other  measures.  It  raised  the  fund  that 
met  the  chief  expenses  of  that  campaign.  Since  that  time  it  has  taken 
an  important  part  in  three  other  hotly  contested  campaigns  in  other 
states,  two  of  which  were  successful. 

At  the  present  moment,  and  throughout  the  future,  these  New  York 
organizations  need  large  sums  of  money  with  which  to  meet  the  legitimate 
expenses  of  active  campaigns  for  great  measures.  They  need  some 
money  from  outside  the  state  of  New  York!  Too  much  of  the  burden  of 
national  campaigning  has  been  and  is  being  left  to  be  borne  by  the  people 
of  New  York  City.  This  policy  is  growing  monotonous.  There  is  every 
reason  why  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Cincinnati,  Pittsburgh,  Cleveland, 
Philadelphia,  Baltimore  and  Boston  should  each  year  turn  $100,000 
into  the  hands  of  these  well-equipped  and  well  managed  national  organi- 
zations whose  officers  know  how  to  get  results,  all  over  our  country. 

Such  organizations  as  these  do  not  exist  in  other  cities;  and  this  is 
very  unfortunate.  New  Orleans  should  be  a  center  of  protectionist 
activity  for  the  South,  San  Francisco  for  the  Pacific  slope,  and  Chicago 
for  the  Middle  West.    Will  they  not  become  so? 

Two  Independent  Workers. — At  the  western  edge  of  the  delta  of 
the  Mississippi  there  have  arisen  two  men  who  loom  up  into  promi- 
nence at  an  outpost  of  the  Army  of  Defense  which  they  themselves  have 
established.  For  what  they  already  have  done  in  the  creation  of  wild- 
fowl preserves  in  Louisiana,  Edward  A.  Mcllhenny  and  Charles  Willis 
Ward  deserve  the  thanks  of  the  American  People-at-large.  An  account 
of  their  splendid  activities,  and  the  practical  results  already  secured,  will 
be  found  in  Chapter  XXXVIII,  on  "Private  Game  Preserves,"  and  in 
the  story  of  Marsh  Island.  Already  the  home  of  these  gentlemen, 
Avery  Island,  Louisiana,  has  become  an  important  center  of  activity  in 
wild -life  protection. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
HOW  TO  MAKE  A  NEW  GAME  LAW 

The  Line  of  Action. — In  the  face  of  a  calamity,  the  saving  of  life 
and  property  and  the  check  of  fire  and  flood  depends  upon  good  judg- 
ment and  quick  action  at  the  critical  moment.  In  emergencies,  the  slow 
and  academic  method  will  not  serve.  It  is  the  run,  the  jump,  the  short 
cut  and  the  violent  method  that  saves  life.  If  a  woman  is  drowning,  the 
sensible  man  does  not  wait  for  an  introduction  to  her;  nor  does  he  run 
to  an  acquaintance  to  borrow  his  boat,  or  stop  to  put  on  a  collar  and 
necktie.  He  seizes  the  first  boat  that  he  can  find,  and  breaks  its  lock 
and  chain  if  necessary ;  or,  failing  that,  he  plunges  in  without  one.  When 
he  reaches  the  imperiled  party,  he  doesn't  say,  "Will  you  kindly  let  me 
save  you?"  He  seizes  her  by  the  hair,  and  tries  to  keep  her  head  above 
water,  without  ceremony. 

That  is  to-day  the  condition  and  the  treatment  necessary  regarding 
our  remnant  of  wild  life.  We  are  compelled  to  act  quickly,  directly,  and 
even  violently  at  times,  if  we  save  anything  worth  while. 

There  is  no  time  to  depend  upon  the  academic  "education"  of  the 
public  by  the  seductive  illustrated  lecture  on  birds,  or  the  article  about 
the  habits  of  mammals.  Those  methods  are  all  well  enough  in  their 
places,  but  we  must  not  depend  upon  them  in  emergencies  like  the  present, 
for  they  do  not  pass  laws  or  arrest  lawbreakers.  Give  the  public  all  of 
that  material  that  you  can  supply,  and  the  more  the  better,  but  for 
heaven's  sake  do  not  depend  upon  the  spread  of  bird-lore  "education" 
to  stop  the  work  of  the  game-hogs!  If  you  do,  all  the  wild  life  will  be 
destroyed  while  the  educational  work  is  going  on. 

Often  you  can  educate  a  gunner,  and  make  him  a  protectionist; 
but  you  never  can  do  it  by  showing  him  pictures  of  birds.  He  needs 
strong  reasoning  and  exhortation,  not  bird-lore.  To-day  it  is  necessary 
to  employ  the  most  direct,  forceful  and  at  times  even  rude  methods. 
Where  slaughtering  cannot  be  stopped  by  moral  suasion,  it  must  be 
stopped  with  a  hickory  club.  The  thing  to  do  is  to  get  results,  and  get 
them  quickly,  before  it  is  too  late! 

If  the  business  section  of  a  town  is  burning  down,  no  one  goes  into 
the  suburbs  to  lecture  on  architecture,  or  exhibit  pictures  of  fire  appa- 
ratus. The  rush  is  for  water,  fire-engines,  red-blooded  men  and  dynamite. 
When  the  birds  all  around  you  are  being  shot  to  death  by  poachers  who 
fear  not  God  nor  regard  man,  and  you  need  help  to  stop  it  on  the  instant, 
run  to  your  neighbor's  house,  and  ring  his  bell.  If  he  fails  to  hear  the 
bell,  pound  on  his  door  until  you  jar  the  whole  house. 


HOW   TO   MAKE  A    NEW  GAME    LAW  259 

When  he  comes  down  half-dressed,  bUnking  and  rubbinj^  his  eyes, 
shout  at  him: 

"Come  out!    Your  birds  are  all  being  shot  to  pieces!" 

"Are  they?"  he  will  say.  "  But  what  can  /  do  about  it?  I  can't  help 
it!    I'm  no  game  warden." 

"Put  on  your  clothes,  get  your  shot-gun  and  come  out  and  drive  off 
the  killing  gang. 

"But  what  good  will  that  do?    They  will  come  back  again." 

"Not  if  we  do  our  duty.  We  must  have  theni  arrested,  and  appear 
against  them  in  court." 

"  But,"  says  the  sleepy  citizen,  "That  won't  do  much  good.  The  laws 
are  not  strict  enough;  and  besides,  they  are  not  well  enforced,  even  as 
they  are ! ' ' 

"Then  let's  make  it  our  business  to  see  that  the  present  laws  are 
enforced,  and  go  to  our  members  of  the  legislature,  and  have  them  pass 
some  stronger  laws." 

And  this  brings  me  to  a  very  important  subject: 

How  TO  Pass  a  New  Law 

We  venture  to  say  that  the  average  citizen  little  realizes  how  possible 
it  is  to  secure  the  passage  of  a  law  that  is  clearly  necessary  for  the  better 
protection  of  wild  life  and  forests.  Because  of  this,  and  of  the  necessity 
for  exact  knowledge,  I  shall  here  set  down  specific  instructions  on  this 
subject. 

The  Personal  Equation. — One  determined  man  can  secure  the 
passage  of  a  good  law,  provided  he  is  reasonably  intelligent  and  suffi- 
ciently detennined.  The  man  who  starts  a  movement  must  make  up  his 
mind  to  follow  it  up,  direct  its  fortunes,  stay  with  it  when  the  storms  of 
opposition  beat  upon  it,  and  nc\'er  giA^e  up  until  it  is  signed  by  the  gov- 
ernor. He  must  be  willing  to  sacrifice  his  personal  convenience,  many 
of  his  pleasures,  and  work  when  his  friends  are  asleep  or  pleasuring. 

In  working  for  the  protection  of  wild  life  there  is  one  mighty  and  un- 
failing source  of  consolation.     It  is  this: 

Your  cause  always  gains  in  strength,  and  the  cause  of  the  destroyers 
always  loses  strength! 

The  Choice  of  a  Cause.- — Be  broad-minded.  Do  not  rush  to  the 
legislature  with  a  demand  for  a  law  to  pcnnit  the  taking  of  bull-heads 
with  June-bugs  in  the  creeks  of  your  township,  or  to  give  your  county  a 
specially  early  open  season  on  quail  in  order  that  your  boy  may  try  his 
new  gun  before  he  goes  back  to  college.  Don't  propose  any  "local" 
legislation;  for  in  progressive  states,  local  game  legislation  is  coming 
strongly  into  disfavor, — just  as  it  should!  Legislate  for  your  whole 
state,  and  nothing  less. 

Do  not  bother  your  legislature  with  a  trivial  bill.  Choose  a  cause 
ihat  is  worth  while  to  grown  men,  and  it  shall  be  well  with  you      It  takes 


260  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

no  more  time  to  pass  a  large  bill  than  a  small  one;   and  big  men  prefer  to 
be  identified  with  big  measures. 

Before  you  have  a  bill  drawn,  advise  with  men  whose  opinions  are 
worth  having.  If  the  end  you  have  in  mind  is  a  great  and  good  one,  go 
ahead,  whether  you  secure  support  in  advance  or  not.  If  the  needs  of 
the  hour  clearly  demand  the  measure,  go  ahead,  even  though  you  start 
absolutely  alone.  A  good  measure  never  goes  far  without  attracting 
company. 

Drafting  a  Bill. — As  a  rule,  the  members  of  a  legislative  body  do 
not  have  time  to  draft  bills  on  subjects  that  are  new  or  strange  to  them. 
A  short  bill  is  easily  prepared  by  your  own  representative ;  but  a  lengthy 
bill,  covering  a  serious  reform,  is  a  different  matter.  Hire  a  lawyer  to 
draft  the  bill  for  you.  A  really  good  lawyer  will  not  charge  much  for 
drafting  a  bill  that  is  to  benefit  the  public,  and  grind  no  private  axe;  but 
if  the  bill  is  long,  and  requires  long  study,  even  the  good  citizen  must 
charge  something. 

Your  bill  must  fully  recognize  existing  laws.  It  must  be  either  pro- 
hibitory or  permissive;  which  means  that  it  can  say  what  shall  not  be 
done,  or  else  that  which  may  be  done  according  to  law,  all  other  acts 
being  forbidden.  Your  lawyer  must  decide  which  form  is  best.  For  my 
part,  I  greatly  prefer  the  prohibitive  form,  as  being  the  stronger  and  more 
impressive  of  the  two.  I  think  it  is  the  province  of  the  law  to  forbid  the 
destruction  of  wild  life  and  forests,  under  penalties. 

Penalties. — Every  law  should  provide  a  penalty  for  its  infringe- 
ment; but  the  penalty  should  not  be  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  offense. 
It  is  just  as  unwise  to  impose  a  fine  of  one  dollar  for  killing  song-birds  for 
food  as  it  is  to  provide  for  a  fine  of  three  hundred  dollars.  A  fine  that  is 
too  small  fails  to  impress  the  prisoner,  and  it  begets  contempt  for  the 
law  and  the  courts!  A  fine  that  is  altogether  too  high  is  apt  to  be  set 
aside  by  the  court  as  "excessive."  In  my  opinion,  the  best  fines  for  wild 
life  slaughter  would  be  as  follows: 

Shooting,   netting  or  trapping  song-birds,   and  other  non-game 

birds,  each  bird $5  to    $25 

Killing  game  birds  out  of  season,  each  bird 10  to      50 

Selling  game  contrary  to  law,  each  offense 100  to    200 

Dynamiting  fish 100  to    200 

Seining  or  netting  game  fishes 50  to    200 

Shooting  birds  with  unfair  weapons 10  to    100 

Killing  an  egret,  Carolina  parakeet  or  whooping  c^ane 100  to    200 

Killing  a  mountain  sheep  or  antelope  anywhere  in  the  U.  S 500 

Killing  an  elk  contrary  to  law 50 

Killing  a  female  deer,  or  fawn  without  horns,  each  offense 50 

Trapping  a  grizzly  bear  for  its  skin 1 00 

For  killing  a  man  "by  mistake,"  the  fine  should  be  $500,  payable 
in  five  annual  instalments,  to  the  court,  for  the  family  of  the  victim. 

Whenever  fines  are  not  paid,  the  convicted  party  should  be  sentenced 
to  imprisonment  at  hard  labor  at  the  rate  of  one-half  day  for  each  dollar 


HOW   TO   MAKE  A    NEW  GAME  LAW  261 

of  the  fine  imposed;  and  a  sentence  at  iiard  labor  should  be  the  first 
option  of  the  court!  Many  a  rich  and  reckless  poacher  snaps  his  fingers  at 
fines ;  but  a  sentence  to  hard  labor  would  strike  terror  to  the  heart  of  the 
most  brazen  of  them.  To  all  such  men,  "labor"  is  the  twin  terror  to 
"death." 

The  Introduction  of  a  Bill. — Much  wisdom  is  called  for  in  the 
selection  of  legislative  champions  for  wild-life  bills.  It  is  possible  to 
state  here  only  the  leading  principles  involved. 

Of  course  it  is  best  to  look  for  an  introducer  within  the  political 
party  that  is  in  the  majority.  A  man  who  has  many  important  bills  on 
his  hands  is  bound  to  give  his  best  attention  to  his  own  pet  measures; 
and  it  is  best  to  choose  a  man  who  is  not  already  overloaded.  If  a  man 
has  a  host  of  enemies,  pass  him  by.  By  all  means  choose  a  man  whose 
high  character  and  good  name  will  be  a  tower  of  strength  to  your  cause ; 
and  if  necessary,  wait  for  him  to  make  up  his  mind.  Mr.  Lawrence  W. 
Trowbridge  waited  three  long  and  anxious  -weeks  in  the  hope  that  Hon. 
George  A.  Blauvelt  would  finally  consent  to  champion  the  Bayne  bill 
in  the  New  York  Assembly.  At  last  Mr.  Blauvelt  consented  to  take  it 
up;  and  the  time  spent  in  waiting  for  his  decision  was  a  grand  invest- 
ment !    He  was  the  Man  of  all  men  to  pilot  that  bill  through  the  Assembly. 

Very  often  the  "quiet  man"  of  a  legislative  body  is  a  good  man  to 
champion  a  new  and  drastic  measure.  The  quiet  man  who  makes  up 
his  mind  to  take  hold  of  "  a  hard  bill  to  pass  "  often  astonishes  the  natives 
by  his  ability  to  get  results.  Representative  John  F.  Lacey,  of  Iowa,  made 
his  name  a  household  word  all  over  the  United  States  by  the  quiet,  steady, 
tireless  and  finally  resistless  energy  with  which  for  three  long  years  in 
Congress  he  worked  for  "the  Lacey  bird  bill."  For  years  his  colleagues 
laughed  at  him,  and  cheerfully  voted  down  his  bill.  But  he  persisted. 
His  cause  steadily  gained  in  strength;  and  his  final  triumph  laid  the  axe 
at  the  root  of  a  thousand  crimes  against  wild  life,  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  this  land.  He  rendered  the  people  of  America  a  service 
that  entitles  him  to  our  everlasting  gratitude  and  remembrance. 

After  the  Introduction  of  a  Bill. — As  soon  as  a  bill  is  introduced 
it  is  referred  to  a  committee,  to  be  examined  and  reported  upon.  If  there 
is  opposition, — and  to  every  bill  that  really  does  something  worth  while 
there  always  is  opposition, — then  there  is  a  "hearing."  The  committee 
appoints  a  day,  when  the  friends  and  foes  of  the  bill  assemble,  and  ex- 
press their  views. 

The  week  preceding  a  hearing  is  your  busy  week.  Yovi  must  plan 
your  campaign,  down  to  the  smallest  details.  Pick  the  men  whom  you 
wish  to  have  speak  (for  ten  minutes  each)  on  the  various  parts  of  your 
bill,  and  divide  the  topics  and  the  time  between  them.  Call  upon  the 
friends  of  the  bill  in  various  portions  of  the  state  to  attend  and  "say 
something."  Go  up  with  a  strong  body  of  fine  men.  Have  as  many 
organizations  represented  as  you  possibly  can!  The  "organizations" 
represent  the  great  mass  of  people,  and  the  voters  also. 

When  you  reach  the  hearing,  hand  to  your  bill's  champion,  who  v.nl\ 


262  QUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

be  floor  manager  for  your  side,  a  clear  and  concise  list  of  your  speakers, 
carefully  arranged  and  stating  who's  who.  That  being  done,  you  have 
only  to  fill  your  own  ten  minutes  and  afterward  enjoy  the  occasion. 

The  Value  of  Accuracy. — It  is  unnecessary  to  say,  in  working  for 
a  bill, — always  be  sure  of  your  facts.  Never  let  your  opponents  catch  you 
tripping  in  accuracy  of  statement.  If  you  make  one  serious  error,  your 
enemies  will  turn  it  against  you  to  the  utmost.  Better  understate  facts 
than  overstate  them.  This  shrewd  old  world  quickly  recognizes  the 
•careful,  conservative  man  whose  testimony  is  so  true  and  so  rock-founded 
that  no  assaults  can  shake  it.  Legislators  are  quick  to  rely  on  the  words 
and  opinions  of  the  man  who  can  safely  be  trusted.  If  your  enemies 
try  to  overwhelm  you  with  extravagant  statements,  that  are  unfair  to 
your  cause,  the  chances  are  that  the  men  who  judge  between  you  will 
recognize  them  by  their  ear-marks,  and  discount  them  accordingly. 

Work  with  Members. — Sometimes  a  subject  that  is  put  before  a 
legislative  body  is  so  new,  and  the  thing  proposed  is  so  drastic,  it  becomes 
necessary  to  take  measures  to  place  a  great  many  facts  before  each  mem- 
ber of  the  body.  Under  such  circumstances  the  member  naturally  desires 
to  be  "shown."  The  cleanest  and  finest  campaigning  for  a  reform 
measure  is  that  in  which  both  sides  deal  with  facts,  rather  than  with 
personal  importunities.  With  a  good  cause  in  hand,  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
prepare  concise  statements  of  facts  and  conditions  from  which  a  legis- 
lator may  draw  logical  conclusions.  Whenever  a  bill  can  be  won  through 
in  that  way,  game  protection  work  becomes  a  delight. 

In  all  important  new  measures  affecting  the  rights  and  the  property 
of  the  whole  people  of  a  state,  the  conscientious  legislator  wishes  to 
know  how  the  people  feel  about  it.  When  you  tell  him  that  "The  wild 
life  belongs  to  the  whole  people  of  the  state;  and  this  bill  is  in  their 
interest,"  he  needs  to  know  for  certain  that  your  proposition  is  true. 
Sometimes  there  is  only  one  way  in  which  he  can  be  fully  convinced; 
and  that  is  by  the  people  of  his  district. 

Then  it  becomes  necessary  to  send  out  a  general  alarm,  and  call  upon 
the  People  to  write  to  their  representatives  and  express  their  views. 
Give  them,  in  printed  matter,  the  latest  facts  in  the  case,  forecast  the 
future  as  you  think  it  should  be  forecast,  then  demand  that  the  men  and 
women  who  are  interested  do  write  to  their  senators  and  assemblyman, 
and  express  their  views,  in  their  own  way!  Let  there  be  no  "machine 
letters"  sent  out,  all  ready  for  signature;  for  such  letters  are  a  waste  of 
effort,  and  belong  in  the  waste  baskets  to  which  they  are  quickly  con- 
signed. The  members  of  legislative  bodies  hate  them,  and  rightly,  too. 
They  want  to  hear  from  men  who  can  think  for  themselves,  give  reasons 
of  their  own,  and  express  their  desires  in  their  own  way. 

The  Press  and  the  Newspapers. — It  is  impossible  to  overestimate 
the  influence  of  the  newspapers  and  the  periodical  press  in  general,  in 
the  protection  of  wild  life.  But  for  their  sympathy,  their  support  and 
their  independent  assaults  upon  the  Army  of  Destruction,  our  game 
species  would  nearly  all  of  them  have  been  annihilated,  long  ago.    Editors 


HOW   TO   MAKE  A    NEW  GAME  LAW 


263 


are  sympathetic  and  responsive  good-citizens,  as  keenly  sensitive  re- 
garding their  duties  as  any  of  the  rest  of  us  are,  and  from  the  earliest 
times  of  protection  they  have  been  on  the  firing  line,  helping  to  beat 
back  the  destroyers.  It  is  indeed  a  rare  sight  to  see  an  editor  giving  aid, 
comfort  or  advice  to  the  enemy.  I  can  not  recall  more  than  a  score  of 
articles  that  I  have  seen  or  heard  of  during  thirty  years  in  this  field 
that  opposed  the  cause  of  wild  life  protection.*  At  this  moment,  for 
instance,  I  bear  in  particularly  grateful  remembrance  the  active  cam- 
paign work  of  the  following  newspapers: 


The  New  York  Times 

The  New  York  Tribune 

The  New  York  Herald 

The  New  York  Globe 

The  New  York  Mail  and  Expiess 

The  New  York  World 

The  New  York  Sun 

The  Springfield  (Mas;^.)  Republican 

The  Chicaeo  Inter-Ocean 

The  vSan  Francisco  Call 

The  Rochester  Union  and  Advertiser 


The  Victo'ia  Colonist 

The  Brooklyn  Standa id-Union 

The  New  Yo-k  Evening  Posr 

The  New  York  Press 

The  Buffalo  News 

The  Minneapolis  Journal 

The  Pittsburgh  Index-Appeal 

The  St.  Louis  Globe-Democrat 

The  Philadel])hia  North  Amencju 

The  Utica  Observer 

The  Washington  Star. 


These  magazines  have  done  good  service  in  the,  cause;    and  some  of 
them  have  spent  many  years  on  the  firing  line: 


Forest  and  Stream 
The  American  Field 
Field  and  Stream 
Recreation  (old  and  new; 
Rod  and  Gun  in  Canada 
In  the  Open 


Sports  Afield 
Western  Field 
Outdoor  Life 
Shield's  Magazine 
Sportsman's  Review 
Outing 


Collier's  Weekly 
The  Independent 
Country  Life 
Outdoor  World 
Bird  Lore 


In  cainpaigning,  always  appeal  for  the  help  of  the  newspapers.  If 
there  are  no  private  axes  to  grind,  they  help  generously.  The  weekly 
journals  are  of  value,  but  the  monthlies  are  printed  so  long  in  advance 
of  their  dates  of  issue  that  they  seldom  move  fast  enough  to  keep  abreast 
of  the  procession.    Their  mechanical  limitations  are  many  and  serious. 

Every  newspaper  likes  "exclusive"  news,  letters  and  articles.  On 
that  basis  they  will  print  about  all  the  live  matter  that  you  can  furnish. 
But  at  the  same  time,  the  important  news  of  the  campaign  must  be  sent 
to  the  press  broadcast,  in  the  form  of  printed  slips  all  ready  for  the  fore- 
man. Many  of  these  are  never  used,  but  the  others  are;  and  it  pays. 
The  news  in  every  slip  must  be  vouched  for  by  the  sender,  or  it  will  not 
be  used.  Often  it  will  appear  as  a  letter  signed  by  the  sender;  which  is 
all  right,  only  the  news  is  most  effective  when  printed  without  a  signature. 
Do  not  count  on  the  Associated  Press;  because  its  peculiar  demands 
render  it  almost  impossible  for  it  to  be  utilized  in  game  protection  work. 

How  TO  Meet  Opposition. — There  is  no  rule  for  the  handling  of 
opposition  that  is  fair  and  open.    For  opposition  that  is  unfair  and  under- 

*  Just  one  hour  after  the  above  paragraph  was  written,  a  long  telegram  from  San 
Francisco  advised  me  that  the  Examiner  of  that  city  had  begun  an  active  and  aggressive 
campaign  for  the  sale  of  all  kinds  of  game. 


264  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

handed,  there  is  one  powerful  weapon, — PubHcity.  The  American 
people  love  fair  play,  and  there  is  nothing  so  fatal  to  an  unfair  fighter  as 
a  searchlight,  turned  full  on  him  without  fear  and  without  mercy.  If  it 
is  reliably  and  persistently  reported  that  some  citizen  who  ought  to  be 
on  the  right  side  has  for  some  dark  reason  become  active  on  the  wrong 
side,  print  the  reports  in  a  large  newspaper,  and  ask  him  publicly  if  they 
are  true.  If  the  reports  are  false,  he  can  quickly  come  out  in  a  letter  and 
say  so,  and  end  the  matter.  If  they  are  true,  the  public  will  soon  know  it, 
and  act  accordingly. 

Eternal  Vigilance. — The  progress  of  a  bill  must  be  watched  by  some 
competent  person  from  day  to  day,  and  finally  from  hour  to  hour.  I 
know  one  bill  that  was  saved  from  defeat  only  because  its  promoter 
dragged  it,  almost  by  force,  out  of  the  hands  of  a  tardy  clerk,  and  accom- 
panied it  in  person  to  the  senate,  where  it  was  passed  in  the  last  hour  of 
a  session. 

A  bill  should  not  be  left  to  a  long  slumber  in  the  drawer  of  a  com- 
mittee.   Such  delays  nearly  always  are  dangerous. 

Signing  the  Bill. — The  promoter  of  a  great  measure  always  seeks  the 
sympathy  of  the  Chief  Executive  early  in  the  day ;  but  he  should  not  make 
the  diplomatic  error  of  trying  to  exact  promises  or  pledges  in  advance. 
Good  judges  do  not  give  away  their  decisions  in  advance. 

Because  a  Chief  Executive  remarks  after  a  bill  has  been  sent  to  him 
for  signing  that  he  "cannot  approve  it,"  it  is  no  reason  to  give  up  in 
despair.  Many  an  executive  approval  has  been  snatched  at  the  last 
moment,  as  a  brand  from  the  burning.  Ask  for  a  hearing  before  the  bill 
is  acted  upon.  At  the  hearing,  and  before  it  and  after,  the  People  who 
wish  the  bill  to  become  a  law  must  express  themselves, — by  letter,  by 
telegram,  and  by  appeal  in  person.  If  the  governor  becomes  convinced 
that  an  overwhelming  majority  of  his  people  desire  him  to  sign  the  bill, 
he  will  sign  it,  even  though  personally  he  is  opposed  to  it !  The  hall  mark 
of  a  good  governor  is  a  spirit  of  obedience  to  the  will  of  the  great  majority. 

Not  until  your  bill  has  been  signed  by  the  governor  are  you  ready  to 
go  home  with  a  quiet  mind,  take  off  your  armor,  and  put  your  ear  to  the 
telephone  while  you  hear  some  one  say  as  your  only  reward, — "Well  done, 
good  and  faithful  servant." 

As  TO  "Credit." — Do  not  count  upon  receiving  any  credit  for  what 
you  do  in  the  cause  of  game  protection,  outside  the  narrow  circle  of  your 
own  family  and  your  nearest  frieniis.  This  is  a  busy  world;  and  the 
human  mind  flits  like  a  restless  bird  from  one  subject  to  another.  The 
men  who  win  campaigns  are  forgotten  by  the  general  public,  in  a  few 
hours !  There  is  nothing  more  fickle  or  more  fleeting  than  the  bubble 
called  "popular  applause."  Judging  by  the  experiences  of  great  men,  I 
should  say  that  it  has  no  substance,  whatever.  The  most  valuable  re- 
ward of  the  man  who  fights  in  a  great  cause,  and  helps  to  win  victories,  is 
the  profound  satisfaction  that  comes  to  every  good  citizen  who  braveh^ 
does  his  whole  duty,  and  leaves  the  world  better  than  he  found  it,  with- 
out the  slightest  thought  of  gallery  applause. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 
NEW  LAWS  NEEDED:  A  ROLL-CALL  OF  THE  STATES 

The  principles  of  wild-life  protection  and  encouragement  are  now  so 
firmly  established  as  to  leave  little  room  for  argument  regarding  their 
value.  When  they  are  set  forth  before  the  people  of  any  given  state, 
the  only  question  is  of  willingness  to  do  the  right  thing;  of  duty  or  a 
defiance  of  duty;  of  good  citizenship  or  the  reign  of  selfishness.  Men 
who  do  not  wish  to  do  their  duty  purposely  befog  great  issues  by  noisy 
talk  and  tiresome  academic  discussions  of  trivial  details;  and  such  men 
are  the  curse  and  scourge  of  reform  movements. 

There  are  a  very  few  persons  who  foolishly  assert  that  ' '  there  are  too 
many  game  laws!"  It  is  entirely  wrong  for  any  person  to  make  such  a 
statement,  for  it  tends  to  promote  harmful  error.  The  fact  that  our  laws 
are  too  lenient,  or  are  not  fully  enforced,  is  no  excuse  for  denouncing  their 
purposes.  We  have  all  along  been  too  timid,  too  self  indulgent,  and  too 
much  afraid  of  hurting  the  feelings  of  the  game-hogs. 

Give  me  the  power  to  make  the  game  laws  of  any  state  or  province 
and  I  will  guarantee  to  save  the  non-migratory  wild  life  of  that  region 
I  will  not  only  make  adequate  laws,  but  I  will  also  provide  means,  men 
and  penalties  by  which  they  will  he  enforced!  It  is  easy  and  simple,  for 
men  who  are  not  afraid. 

I  have  been  at  considerable  pains  to  analyze  the  game  laws  of  each 
state,  ascertain  their  shortcomings,  and  give  a  list  of  the  faults  that  need 
correction  by  new  legislation.  It  has  required  no  profound  wisdom  to 
do  this,  because  the  principles  involved  are  so  plain  that  any  intelligent 
schoolboy  fifteen  years  old  can  master  them  in  one  hour.  I  have  per- 
formed this  task  hopefully,  in  the  belief  that  in  many  states  the  real 
issues  have  not  been  plainly  put  before  the  people.  Hereafter  no  state 
shall  destroy  its  wild  life  through  ignorance  of  the  laws  that  would  pre- 
serve it. 

Let  no  man  say  that  "  it  is  too  late  to  save  the  wild  life  " ;  for  excepting 
the  dead-and-gone  species,  that  is  not  true.  Let  no  man  say  that  "we 
can  not  save  the  wild  life  by  law";  for  that  is  not  true,  either.  As  long 
as  laws  are  lax,  even  law-abiding  people  will  take  advantage  of  them. 

There  are  millions  of  men  who  think  it  is  right  to  kill  all  the  game  that 
the  law  allows!  There  are  thousands  of  women  who  think  it  is  right  to 
wear  aigrettes  as  long  as  the  law  permits  their  sale!  And  yet,  if  we  are 
resolute  and  diligent  there  is  plenty  of  hope  for  the  future.  During  the 
past  three  years,  to  go  no  farther  back,  we  have  seen  the  whole  state  of 
New  York  swept  clean  of  the  traffic  in  native  wild  game  by  the  Bayne 


266  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

law,  and  of  the  traffic  in  wild  birds'  plumage  on  women's  hats  through 
the  Dutcher  law.  To-day,  in  this  state,  we  find  ninty-nine  women  out  of 
every  one  hundred  wearing  flowers,  and  laces,  and  plush  and  satin  on 
their  hats,  instead  of  the  heads,  bodies  and  feathers  of  wild  birds  that 
were  the  regular  thing  until  three  years  ago.  The  change  has  been  a 
powerful  commentary  on  the  value  of  good  laws  for  the  protection  of 
wild  life.  The  Dutcher  law  has  caused  the  plumage  of  wild  biids  almost 
wholly  to  disappear  from  the  State  of  New  York! 

We  shall  here  point  out  the  plain  duty  of  each  state;  and  then  it  will 
be  up  to  them,  individually,  to  decide  whether  they  can  stand  the  blood- 
test  or  not. 

A  state  or  a  nation  can  be  ungentlemanly,  unfair  or  mean,  just  the 
same  as  an  individual.  No  state  has  a  right  to  maintain  shambles  for 
the  slaughter  of  migratory  game  or  song  birds  that  belong  in  part  to 
sister  states.  Every  state  holds  its  migratory  bird  life  in  trust,  for  the  benefit 
of  the  people  of  the  nation  at  large.  A  state  is  just  as  responsible  for  its 
treatment  of  wild  life  as  any  individual ;  and  it  is  time  to  open  books  of 
account. 

It  is  robbery,  as  well  as  murder,  for  any  southern  state  to  slaughter 
the  robins  of  the  northern  states,  where  no  robins  may  be  killed.  No 
southern  gentleman  can  permit  such  doings,  after  the  crime  has  been  pointed 
out  to  him!  In  the  North,  the  men  who  are  caught  shooting  robins  are 
instantly  haled  to  court,  and  fined  or  imprisoned.  If  we  of  the  North 
should  kill^  for  food  the  mockingbirds  that  visit  us,  the  people  of  the 
South  instantly  would  brand  us  as  monsters  of  greed  and  meanness ;  and 
they  would  be  perfectly  justified  in  so  doing. 

Let  us  at  least  be  honest  in  "agreeing  upon  a  state  of  fact,"  as  the 
lawyers  say,  whether  we  act  sensibly  and  mercifully  or  not.  Just  so  long 
as  there  remains  in  this  land  of  ours  a  fauna  of  game  birds,  and  the 
gunners  of  one-half  the  states  are  allowed  to  dictate  the  laws  for  the 
slaughter  of  it,  just  so  long  will  our  present  protection  remain  utterly 
absurd  and  criminally  inadequate.     Look  at  these  absurdities: 

New  York,  New  Jersey  and  many  other  northern  states  rigidly  prohibit 
the  late  winter  and  spring  shooting  of  waterfowl  and  shore  birds,  and 
limit  the  bag;  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Florida,  and  other 
southern  states  not  only  slaughter  wild  fowl  and  shore  birds  all  winter 
and  spring,  without  limit,  but  several  of  them  kill  certain  non-game 
birds  besides! 

All  the  northern  states  protect  the  robin,  for  the  good  that  it  does; 
but  in  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  Mississippi,  Louisiana  and  some  other 
southern  states,  thousands  of  robins  are  shot  for  food.  Minnesota  has 
stopped  spring  shooting;  but  her  sister  state  on  the  south,  Iowa,  obsti- 
nately refuses  to  do  so. 

The  United  States  at  Large. — There  are  two  great  measures  that 
should  be  carried  into  effect  by  the  governing  body  of  the  United  States. 
One  is  the  enactment  of  a  law  providing  federal  protection  for  all  migratory 


STATE   ROLL-CALL    FOR   NEW  LAWS  267 

birds;  and  Canada  and  Mexico  should  be  induced  to  join  with  the  United 
States  m  an  international  treaty  to  that  effect. 

The  other  necessary  measure  is  the  passage  of  a  joint  resolution  of 
Congress  declaring  every  national  forest  and  forest  reserve  also  a  game 
preserve  and  general  sanctuary  for  wild  life,  in  which  there  shall  be  no 
hunting  or  killing  of  wild  creatures  of  any  kind  save  predatory  animals. 

The  tendency  of  the  times, — and  the  universal  slaughter  of  wild  life 
on  this  continent, — point  straight  as  an  arrow  flies  in  that  direction. 
vSoon  or  late,  we  have  GOT  to  come  to  it!  If  Congress  does  not  take  the 
initiatory  steps,  the  People  will!  Such  a  consummation  is  necessary; 
it  is  justified  by  common  sense  and  the  inexorable  logic  of  the  situation, 
and  when  done  it  will  be  right. 

The  time  was  when  the  friends  of  wild  life  did  not  dare  speak  of  this 
subject  in  Washington  save  in  whispers.  That  was  in  the  days  when  the 
Appalachian  Park  bill  could  not  be  passed,  and  when  there  were  angry 
mutterings  and  even  curses  leveled  against  Gilford  Pinchot  and  the 
Forestry  Bureau  because  so  many  national  forests  were  being  set  aside. 
That  was  in  the  days  when  a  few  western  sheep-men  thought  that  they 
owned  the  whole  Rocky  Mountains  without  having  bought  them. 
To-day,  the  American  people  have  grown  accustomed  to  the  idea  of 
having  the  resources  of  the  public  domain  saved  and  conserved  for  the 
benefit  of  the  millions  rather  than  lavished  upon  a  favored  few.  To-day 
it  is  perfectly  safe  to  talk  about  making  every  national  forest  a  first  class 
wild-life  sanctuary,  and  it  is  up  to  the  People  to  request  Congress  to  take 
that  action,  at  once. 

The  Weeks  bill,  the  Anthony  bill,  and  the  McLean  bill  now  before 
Congress  to  provide  federal  protection  for  migratory  birds  are  practically 
identical.  All  three  are  good  bills;  and  it  matters  not  which  one  finally 
becomes  a  law.  Whichever  is  put  forward  finally  for  passage  should 
provide  federal  protection  for  all  migratory  birds  that  ever  enter  the 
United  States,  Alaska,  or  Porto  Rico.  Why  favor  the  duck  and  leave 
the  robin  to  its  fate,  or  vice  versa?  It  will  be  just  as  easy  to  do  this  task 
by  wholes  as  by  halves.  The  time  to  hesitate,  to  feel  timid,  or  to  be 
afraid  of  the  other  fellow  has  gone  by.  To-day  the  millions  of  honest 
and  serious-minded  Americans  are  ready  to  back  the  most  thorough  an  d 
most  drastic  policy,  because  that  has  become  the  most  necessary  and  the 
best  policy.  Furthermore,  it  is  the  only  policy  worthy  of  serious  con- 
sideration. 

Some  of  our  states  ha\-e  done  rather  well  in  wild-life  protection, — 
considering  the  absurdity  of  our  national  policy  as  a  whole;  others  have 
done  indifferently,  and  some  have  been  and  still  are  very  remiss.  Here 
is  where  we  intend  to  hew  to  the  line,  and  without  fear  or  favor  set  forth 
the  standing  of  each  state  according  to  its  merits  or  its  lack  of  merits. 
In  a  life-or-death  matter  such  as  now  confronts  us  regarding  the  wild 
life  of  our  country,  it  is  time  to  speak  plainly. 

In  the  following  call  of  the  States,  the  glaring  deficiencies  in  state 
game  laws  will  be  set  forth  in  detail,  in  order  that  the  sore  spots  may  be 


268  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

exposed  to  the  view  of  the  doctors.  Conditions  will  be  represented  as 
they  exist  at  the  end  of  the  summer  of  igi2,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  these 
faults  soon  may  be  corrected. 

A  Roll-Call  of  the  States 
Alabama : 

It  is  a  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  open  this  list  with  the  name  of  a  state 
that  is  entitled  to  a  medal  of  honor  for  game  protection.  In  this  particular 
field  of  progress  and  enlightenment,  the  state  of  Alabama  is  the  pioneer 
state  of  the  South.  New  York  now  occupies  a  similar  position  in  the 
North;  but  New  York  is  an  older  state,  and  stronger  in  her  general  love 
of  nature.  The  attainment  of  advanced  protection  in  any  southern 
state  is  a  very  different  matter  from  what  it  is  in  the  North. 

Five  years  ago  Alabama  set  her  house  in  order.  The  slaughter  of 
song  and  insectivorous  birds  has  been  so  far  stopped  as  any  Southern 
state  can  stop  it  unaided  by  the  federal  government,  and  those  birds  are 
recognized  and  treated  as  the  farmers'  best  friends.  The  absurd  system 
of  attempted  protection  through  county  laws  has  been  abandoned.  The 
sale  of  game  has  been  stopped,  and  since  that  stoppage,  quail  have  in- 
creased. The  trapping  and  export  of  game  have  ceased,  and  wild 
turkeys  and  woodcock  are  now  increasing.  It  is  unlawful  to  kill  or 
capture  non-game  birds.  Bag  limits  have  been  imposed,  but  the  bag 
limit  laws  are  all  too  liberal,  and  should  be  reduced.  A  hunter's  license  law 
is  in  force,  and  the  department  of  game  and  fish  is  self-supporting.  Night 
hunting  is  prohibited,  and  female  deer  may  not  be  killed.  A  compre- 
hensive warden  system  has  been    provided.    As  yet,  however,  Alabama 

Permits  the  shooting  of  waterfowl  to  March  15,  which  is  too  late,  by  one  and  one- 
half  months. 

The  use  of  automatic  and  pump  guns  in  hunting  should  be  suppressed. 

There  should  be  a  limit  of  two  deer  per  year,  and  killing  should  be  restricted  to 
deer  with  horns  not  less  than  three  inches  long. 

The  story  of  game  protection  in  Alabama  began  in  1907.  Prior  to 
that  time,  the  slaughter  of  wild  life  was  very  great.  It  is  known  that 
enormous  numbers  of  quail  were  annually  killed  by  negro  farm  hands, 
who  hunted  at  least  three  days  each  week,  regardless  of  work  to  be  done. 
The  slaughter  of  quail,  wild  ducks  woodcock,  doves,  robins  and  snipe 
was  described  as  "nauseating." 

The  change  that  has  been  wrought  since  1907  is  chiefly  due  to  the 
efforts  of  one  man.  Alabama  owes  her  standing  to-day  to  the  admirable 
qualities  of  John  H.  Wallace,  Jr.,  her  Game  and  Fish  Commissioner, 
author  of  the  State's  policy  in  wild-life  conservation.  His  broad-minded- 
ness, his  judgment  and  his  success  make  him  a  living  object  lesson  of  the 
power  of  one  determined  man  in  the  conservation  of  wild  life. 

Commissioner  Wallace  is  an  ardent  supporter  of  the  Weeks  and 
Anthony  bills  for  federal  protection,  and  as  a  lawj^er  of  the  South,  he 
believes  there  is  "no  constitutional  inhibition  against  federal  legislation 
for  the  protection  of  birds  of  passage." 


STATE   ROLL-CALL    FOR    NEW  LAWS  269 


Alaska: 


The  sale  of  game  must  be  absolutely  prohibited,  forever. 

The  slaughter  of  big  game  Ijy  Indians,  miners  and  prospectors  should  now  be 
limited,  and  strictly  regulated  by  law,  on  rational  lines. 

The  slaughter  of  walrus  for  ivory  and  hides,  both  in  the  Alaskan  and  Russian 
waters  of  Bering  Sea,  should  be  totally  prohibited  for  ten  years. 

The  game-warden  service  should  be  quadrupled  in  number  of  wardens,  and  in 
general  effectiveness. 

The  game-warden  service  should  be  supplied  with  two  sea-going  vessels,  inde- 
pendent for  patrol  work. 

The  bag  limit  on  hoofed  game  is  50%  too  large. 

To  accomplish  these  ends.  Congress  should  annually  appropriate  .$50,000  for  the 
protection  of  wild  life  in  Alaska.  The  present  amount,  $15,000,  is  very  inadequate, 
and  the  great  wild-life  interests  at  stake  amply  justify  the  larger  amount. 

It  is  now  time  for  Alaska  to  make  substantial  advances  in  the  pro- 
tection of  her  wild  life.  It  is  no  longer  right  nor  just  for  Indians,  miners 
and  prospectors  to  be  permitted  by  law  to  kill  all  the  big  game  they 
please,  whenever  they  please.  The  indolent  and  often  extortionate 
Indians  of  Alaska, — who  now  demand  "big  money"  for  every  service 
they  perform, — are  not  so  valuable  as  citizens  that  they  should  be  per- 
mitted to  feed  riotously  upon  moose,  and  cow  moose  at  thai,  until  that 
species  is  exterminated.  Miners  and  prospectors  are  valuable  citizens, 
but  that  is  no  reason  why  they  should  forever  be  allowed  to  live  upon 
wild  game,  any  more  than  that  hungry  prospectors  in  our  Rocky  Moun- 
tains should  be  allowed  to  kill  cattle. 

Alaska  and  its  resources  do  not  belong  to  the  very  few  people  from 
the  States ' '  who  have  gone  there  to  make  their  fortunes  and  get  out 
again  as  quickly  as  possible.  The  quicker  the  public  mind  north  of 
Wrangel  is  disabused  of  that  idea,  the  better.  Its  game  belongs  to  the 
people  of  this  nation  of  ninety-odd  millions,  and  it  is  a  safe  prediction 
that  the  ninety  millions  will  not  continue  to  be  willing  that  the  miners, 
prospectors  and  Indians  shall  continue  to  live  on  moose  meat  and  caribou 
tongues  in  order  to  save  bacon  and  beef. 

Mr.  Frank  E.  Kleinschmidt  said  to  me  that  at  Sand  Point,  Alaska, 
he  saw  eighty-two  caribou  tongues  brought  in  by  an  Indian,  and  sold  at 
fifty  cents  each,  while  (according  to  all  accounts)  most  of  the  bodies  of 
the  slaughtered  animals  became  a  loss. 

Governor  Clark  has  recommended  in  his  annual  report  for  1911  that 
the  protection  now  enjoyed  by  the  giant  brown  bear  (Ursus  middendorffi) 
on  Kadiak  Island  be  removed,  for  the  benefit  of  settlers  and  their  stock! 
It  goes  without  saying  that  no  one  proposes  that  predatory  wild  animals 
shall  be  permitted  to  retard  the  development  of  any  wild  country  that 
is  required  by  civilized  man.  All  we  ask  in  this  matter  is  that,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  once-proposed  slaughter  of  sea-lions  on  the  Pacific  Coast, 
the  necessity  of  the  proposed  slaughter  shall  be  fully  and  adequately  proven 
before  the  killing  begins!  It  is  fair  to  insist  that  the  sea-lion  episode  shall 
not  be  repeated  on  Kadiak  Island. 


270  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

The  big  game  of  Alaska  can  not  long  endure  against  a  "limit"  of 
two  moose,  three  mountain  sheep,  three  caribou  and  six  deer  per  year, 
per  man.  At  that  rate  the  moose  and  sheep  soon  will  disappear.  The 
limit  should  be  one  moose,  two  sheep,  two  caribou  and  four  deer, — unless 
we  are  willing  to  dedicate  the  Alaskan  big  game  to  Commercialism.  No 
sportsman  needs  a  larger  bag  than  the  revised  schedule ;  and  commercial- 
ists  should  not  be  allowed  to  kill  big  game  anywhere,  at  any  time. 

Let  us  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  Alaska  is  being  throughly  "opened 
up"  to  the  Man  with  a  Gun.  Here  is  the  latest  evidence,  from  the  new 
circular  of  an  outfitter : 

"  I  will  have  plenty  of  good  horses,  and  good,  competent  and  courteous 
guides;  also  other  camp  attendants  if  desired.  My  intention  is  to  estab- 
lish permanently  at  that  point,  as  I  believe  it  is  the  gateway  to  the  finest 
and  about  the  last  of  the  great  game  countries  of  North  America." 

The  road  is  open;  the  pack-train  is  ready;  the  guides  are  waiting. 
Go  on  and  slay  the  Remnant ! 

Arizona: 

The  band-tailed  pigeons  and  all  non-game  birds  should  immediately  be  given  pro" 
tection;  and  a  salaried  warden  system  should  be  established  under  a  Commissioner 
whose  term  is  not  less  than  four  years. 

The  use  of  automatic  and  pump  guns,  in  hunting,  should  be  prohibited. 

Spring  shooting  should  be  prohibited. 

Arizona  has  good  reason  to  be  proud  of  her  up-to-date  position  in  the 
ranks  of  the  best  game-protecting  states.  No  other  state  or  territory 
of  her  age  ever  has  made  so  good  a  showing  of  protective  laws.  The 
enactment  of  laws  to  cover  the  points  mentioned  above  would  leave 
little  to  be  desired  in  Arizona.  That  state  has  a  bird  fauna  well  worth 
protecting,  and  game  wardens  are  extremely  necessary. 

Arkansas  : 

The  enforcement  of  game  laws  should  be  placed  in  charge  of  a  salaried  commissioner. 

Spring  shooting  of  wildfowl  should  be  stopped  at  once. 

A  reasonable  close  season  should  be  provided  for  water  fowl,  and  swans  should  be 
protected  throughout  the  year. 

A  bag-limit  law  should  be  enacted. 

A  force  of  game  wardens,  salaried  and  unsalaried,  should  at  once  be  created. 

The  killing  of  female  deer  and  the  hounding  of  deer,  should  be  stopped. 

No  buck  deer  should  be  shot,  unless  horns  three  inches  long  are  seen  before  firing. 

A  hunter's  license  law  is  necessary;  and  the  fees  should  go  to  the  support  of  the 
game  protection  department. 

The  local  exemptions  in  favor  of  market  hunters  in  Mississippi  county  should  be 
repealed. 

It  appears  that  in  Arkansas  the  laws  for  the  protection  and  increase 
of  wild  life  are  by  no  means  up  to  the  mark.  At  this  moment,  Arkansas 
is  next  to  Florida,  the  rearmost  of  all  our  states  in  wild-life  protection. 
Awake.  Arkansas!     Consider  the  peril  that  threatens  }'our  faima.     The 


STATE   ROLL-CALL    FOR    NEW  LAWS  271 

Sunk  Lands,  in  your  northeastern  corner  along  the  St.  Francis  River,  are 
the  greatest  wild-fowl  refuge  anywhere  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  between 
the  Gulf  Coast  of  Louisiana  and  the  breeding-grounds  of  Minnesota. 
A  duty  to  the  nation  devolves  upon  you,  to  protect  the  migratory  water- 
fowl that  visit  your  great  bird  refuge  from  the  automatic  and  pump  guns 
of  the  pothunters  who  shoot  for  northern  markets,  and  kill  all  that  they 
can  kill.  Protect  those  Sunken  Lands!  Confer  a  boon  on  all  the  people 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley  by  making  that  region  a  bird  refuge  in  fact  as 
well  as  in  name. 

Heretofore,  you  have  permitted  hired  market  gunners  from  outside 
}'our  borders  to  slaughter  the  wild-fowl  of  your  Sunk  Lands  literally  by 
millions,  and  ship  them  to  northern  markets,  with  very  little  benefit  to 
your  people.  It  is  time  for  that  slaughter  to  cease.  Don't  maintain  a 
duck  and  goose  shambles  in  Mississippi  County,  year  after  year,  as  North 
Carolina  does !  Do  unto  other  states  as  you  would  have  other  states  do 
unto  you.  Do  not  be  afraid  to  pass  nine  good  laws  in  one  act.  Clear 
your  record  in  the  Family  of  States,  and  save  your  fauna  before  it  is  too 
late.  It  is  not  fair  for  you  to  permit  the  slaughter  of  the  insectivorous 
birds  that  are  like  the  blood  of  life  to  the  farmer  and  fruit  grower. 

California: 

The  sale  of  all  wild  game  should  be  forever  prohibited. 

The  use  of  automatic  and  pump  shotguns,  in  hunting,  should  be  prohibited. 

The  kihing  of  pigeons  and  doves  as  "game"  and  "food"  should  be  stopped. 

The  sage  grouse  and  every  other  species  of  bird  threatened  with  extinction  should 
be  given  ten  year  close  seasons. 

The  mule  deer  (if  any  remain)  and  the  Columbian  black-tailed  deer  in  the  southern 
counties  should  be  accorded  a  ten-year  close  season. 

A  large  state  game  preserve  should  be  created  immediately,  on  or  near  Mount  Shasta 
and  abundantly  stocked  with  nucleus  herds  of  antelope,  black-tailed  deer,  bison  and 
elk. 

A  suitable  preserve  in  the  southern  part  of  the  state  should  be  set  aside  for  the 
dwarf  elk. 

As  game  laws  are  generally  regarded,  California  has  on  her  books  a 
series  that  look  rather  good  to  the  e3^e,  but  which  are  capable  of  consider- 
able improvement.  All  along  the  line,  the  birds  and  quadrupeds  of  the 
Golden  State  are  vanishing!  Under  that  heading,  a  vigorous  chapter 
could  be  written;  but  space  forbids  its  development  here.  Just  fancy 
laws  that  permit  gunning  and  hunting  with  dogs,  from  August  until 
January — one-half  the  entire  year !  Think  of  the  nesting  birds  that  are 
disturbed  or  killed  by  dogs  and  gunners  after  other  birds ! 

California's  wild  ducks  and  geese  have  been  slaughtered  to  an  extent 
almost  beyond  belief.  The  splendid  sage  grouse  and  the  sharp-tailed 
grouse  are  greatly  reduced  in  numbers.  Of  her  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  antelope,  once  the  cheapest  game  in  the  market,  scarcely  "a  trace" 
remains.  Her  mountain  sheep  and  mule  deer  are  almost  extinct.  Her 
grizzly  bears  are  gone! 

The  most  terrible  slaughter  ever  recorded  for  automatic  guns  occurred 


272  OVR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

in  Glenn  County,  Cal.,  on  Feb.  5,  1906,  when  two  men  (whose  story  was 
published  in  Outdoor  Life,  xvii,  p.  371,  April,  1906),  killed  450  geese  in 
one  day,  and  actually  bagged  218  of  them  in  one  hour! 

Every  person  who  has  paid  attention  to  game  protection  on  the 
Pacific  coast  well  knows  that  during  the  past  eight  years  or  more,  the 
work  of  game  protection  in  California  has  been  in  a  state  of  frequent 
turmoil.  At  times  the  lack  of  harmony  between  the  State  Fish  and  Game 
Commission  and  the  sportsmen  of  the  state  has  been  damaging  to  the 
interests  of  wild  life,  and  deplorable.  In  the  case  of  Warden  Welch,  in 
Santa  Cruz  County,  pernicious  politics  came  near  robbing  the  state  of  a 
splendid  warden,  but  the  courts  finally  overthrew  the  overthrowers  of 
Mr.  Welch,  and  reinstated  him. 

The  fish  and  game  commissioners  of  any  state  should  be  broad- 
minded,  non-partisan,  strictly  honest  and  sincere.  So  long  as  they  possess 
these  qualities,  they  deserve  and  should  have  the  earnest  and  aggressive 
support  of  all  sportsmen  and  all  lovers  of  wild  life.  The  remnant  of  wild 
life  is  entitled  to  a  square  deal,  and  harmony  in  the  camp  of  its  friends. 
Fortunately  California  has  an  excellent  force  of  salaried  game  wardens 
(82  in  all)  and  577  volunteer  wardens  serving  without  salary. 

Colorado : 

The  State  of  Colorado  should  instantly  stop  the  sale  of  native  wild  game  to  be  used 
as  food. 

It  should  stop  all  late  winter  and  spring  shooting  of  native  wild  birds. 

It  should  give  the  sage  grouse,  pinnated  grouse  and  all  shore  birds  a  ten  year  close 
season,  remove  the  dove  from  the  list  of  game  birds,  and  give  it  a  permanent  close 
season. 

It  should  remove  the  crane  and  the  swan  from  the  list  of  game  birds. 

In  twenty-five  short  years  we  have  seen  in  Colorado  a  waste  of  wild 
life  and  the  destruction  of  a  living  inheritance  that  has  few  parallels  in 
history.  Possibly  the  people  of  Colorado  are  satisfied  with  the  residuum ; 
but  some  outsiders  regard  all  Rock}^  Mountain  shambles  with  a  feeling 
of  horror. 

A  brief  quarter-century  ago,  Colorado  was  a  zoological  park  of  grand 
scenery  and  big  game.  The  scenery  remains,  but  of  the  great  wild  herds, 
only  samples  are  left,  and  of  some  species  not  even  that. 

The  last  bison  of  Colorado  were  exterminated  in  Lost  Park  b}' 
scoundrels  calling  themselves  "taxidermists,"  in  1897.  Of  the  200,000 
mule  deer  that  inhabited  Routt  County  and  other  portions  of  Colorado, 
not  enough  now  remain  to  make  deer  hunting  interesting.  A  perpetual 
close  season  was  put  on  mountain  sheep  just  in  time  to  save  a  dozen  small 
flocks  as  seed  stock.  Those  flocks  have  been  permitted  to  live,  and  they 
have  bred  until  now  there  are  perhaps  3,500  sheep  in  the  state.  Of  elk, 
only  a  remnant  is  left,  now  protected  for  fifteen  years. 

The  grizzly  bear  is  so  thoroughly  gone  that  one  is  seen  only  by  a 
rare  accident;  but  black  bears  and  pumas  are  sufficiently  numerous  to 
afford  fair  sport,  provided  the  hunter  has  a  fine  outfit  of  dogs,  horses  and 


STATE   ROLL-CALL    FOR   NEW  LAWS 


273 


guides.  Of  prong-horned  an- 
telope, several  bands  remain, 
but  it  is  reported  that  they 
are  steadily  diminishing. 
The  herds  and  herders  of 
domestic  sheep  are  blamed 
for  the  decrease,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  they  deserve  it. 
The  sheep  and  their  cham- 
pions are  the  implacable 
enemies  of  all  wild  game,  and 
before  them  the  game  van- 
ishes, everywhere. 

The  lawmakers  of  Color- 
ado have  tried  hard  to  pro- 
vide adequate  statutes  for 
the  protection  of  the  wild 
life  of  the  state.  In  fact,  I 
think  that  no  state  has  put 
forth  greater  or  more  elab- 
orate efforts  in  that  direc- 
tion. For  example,  in  1899, 
under  the  leadership  of  Judge 
D.  C.  Beaman  of  Denver, 
Colorado  initiated  the  ' '  more 
game  movement,"  by  enact- 
ing a  very  elaborate  law  pro- 
viding for  the  establishment 
of  private  game  preserves 
and  farms  for  the  breeding 
of  game  under  state  license, 
and  the  tagging  and  sale  of 
preserve-bred  game  under 
state  supervision. 

The  history  of  game  de- 
struction in    Colorado  is  a 

repetition  of  the  old,  old  story, — plenty  of  laws,  but  a  hundred  times  too 
many  hunters,  killing  the  game  both  according  to  law  and  contrary  to  it, 
and  doing  it  five  times  as  fast  as  the  game  could  breed.  That  combina- 
tion can  safely  be  warranted  to  wipe  out  the  wild  life  of  any  country  in 
the  world,  and  accomplish  it  right  swiftly. 

As  a  big-game  country,  Colorado  is  distinctly  out  of  the  running.  Her 
people  are  too  lawless,  and  her  frontiersmen  are,  in  the  main,  far  too 
selfish  to  look  upon  plenteous  game  without  going  after  it.  Some  of  these 
days,  a  new  call  of  the  wild  will  arise  in  Colorado,  demanding  an  open 
season  on  mountain  sheep.  Those  who  demand  it  will  say,  "  What  harm 
will  it  do  to  kill  a  few  surplus  bucks  ?  It  will  impro\'e  the  breed,  and  make 
the  herds  increase  faster!" 


BAND-TAILED   PIGEON 

Often  Mistaken  for  the  Passenger  Pigeon.     The  rapid  Slaughter 

of  this  Species  has  Alarmed  the  Ornithologists  of  California, 

who  now  fear  its  Extinction 


274  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

By  all  means,  have  an  "open  season"  on  the  Colorado  big-horn  and 
the  British  Columbia  elk.  It  will  "do  them  good."  The  excitement  of 
ram  slaughter  will  be  good  for  the  females,  will  it  not  ?  Of  course,  they 
will  breed  faster  after  that, — with  all  the  big  rams  dead.  Any  "surplus " 
wild  life  is  a  public  nuisance,  and  should  promptly  be  shot  to  pieces. 

In  Colorado  there  is  some  desire  that  Estes  Park  should  be  acquired 
as  a  national  park,  and  maintained  by  the  government;  but  the  strong 
reasons  for  this  have  not  yet  appeared.  As  yet  we  have  not  heard  any 
reason  why  the  State  of  Colorado  should  not  herself  take  it  and  make  of 
it  a  state  park  and  game  preserve.  If  done,  it  could  be  offered  as  a  partial 
atonement  for  her  wastefulness  in  throwing  away  her  inheritance  of 
grand  game. 

Colorado  has  work  to  do  in  the  preservation  of  her  remnant  of  bird 
life.  In  several  respects  she  is  behind  the  times.  The  present  is  no  time 
to  hesitate,  or  to  ask  the  gunners  what  they  wish  to  have  done  about  new 
laws  for  the  saving  of  the  remnant  of  game.  The  dictates  of  common 
sense  are  plain,  and  inexorable.  Let  the  lawmakers  do  their  whole  duty 
by  the  remnant  of  wild  life,  whether  the  game  killers  like  it  or  not. 

The  Curse  oj  Domestic  Sheep  Upon  Game  and  Cattle. — Much  has 
been  said  in  print  and  out  of  print  regarding  the  extent  to  which  domestic 
sheep  have  destroyed  the  cattle  ranges  and  incidentally  many  game 
ranges  of  the  West;  but  the  half  hath  not  been  told.  The  American 
people  as  a  whole  do  not  realize  that  the  domestic  sheep  has  driven  the 
domestic  steer  from  the  free  grass  of  the  wild  West,  with  the  same  speed 
and  thoroughness  with  which  the  buffalo -hunters  of  the  70's  and  80's 
swept  away  the  bison.  I  have  seen  hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  of 
what  once  were  beautiful  and  fertile  cattle-grazing  lands  in  Montana, 
that  has  been  left  by  grazing  sheep  herds  looking  precisely  as  if  the 
ground  had  been  shaven  with  razors  and  then  sandpapered.  The  sheep 
have  driven  out  the  cattle,  and  the  price  of  beef  has  gone  up  accord- 
ingly. Neither  cattle,  horses  nor  wild  game  can  find  food  on  ground 
that  has  been  grazed  over  by  sheep. 

The  following  is  the  testimony  of  a  reliable  eye  witness,  Mr.  Dillon 
Wallace,  and  the  full  text  appears  in  his  book,  ''Saddle  and  Camp  in 
the  Rockies,"  (page  169): — 

Domestic  sheep  and  sheep  herders  are  the  greatest  enemies  of  the  antelope,  as 
well  as  of  other  game  animals  and  birds-  in  the  regions  where  herders  take  their  flocks. 
The  ranges  over  which  domestic  sheep  pasture  are  denuded  of  forage  and  stripped  of 
all  growth,  and  antelope  will  not  remain  upon  a  range  where  sheep  have  been. 

Thus  the  sheep,  sweeping  clean  all  before  them  and  leaving  the  ranges  over  which 
they  pass  unproductive,  for  several  succeeding  seasons,  of  pasturage  for  either  wild 
or  domestic  animals,  together  with  the  destructive  shepherds,  are  the  worst  enemies 
at  present  of  Utah's  wild  game,  particularly  of  antelope,  sage  hens,  and  grouse. 

In  Iron  county,  which  has  already  become  an  extensive  sheep  region,  settlers  teU 
us  that  before  the  advent  of  sheep,  grass  grew  so  luxuriously  that  a  yearling  calf  lying 
in  it  could  not  be  seen.  Not  only  has  the  grass  here  been  eaten,  but  the  roots  tramped 
out  and  killed  by  the  hoofs  of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  sheep,  and  now  wide  areas, 
where  not  long  since  grass  was  so  plentiful,  are  as  bare  and  desolate  as  sand-piles. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

NEW  LAWS  NEEDED  IN  THE  STATES 

(Continued) 

Connecticut: 

The  sale  of  all  native  wild  game,  regardless  of  its  source,  should  be  prohibited  at 
all  times.  Enact  at  once  a  five-year  close  season  law  on  the  remnant  of  ruffed  grouse, 
quail,  woodcock,  snipe,  and  all  shore  birds. 

Even  in  the  home  of  the  newest  and  deadliest  "autoloading"  shotgun,  those  guns 
and  pump  guns  should  be  prohibited  in  hunting. 

The  enormous  bag  limits  of  35  rail  and  50  each  per  day  of  plover,  snipe  and  shore 
birds  is  a  crime!  They  should  be  replaced  by  a  ten-year  close  season  law  for  all  of 
those  species. 

The  terms  of  the  game  commissioners  should  be  not  less  than  four  years. 

Like  so  many  other  states,  Connecticut  has  recklessly  wasted  her 
wild-life  inheritance.  During  the  fifteen  years  preceding  the  year  1898, 
the  bird  life  of  that  state  had  decreased  75  per  cent.  On  March  6,  1912, 
Senator  Geo.  P.  McLean,  of  Connecticut  stated  at  the  hearing  held  by 
his  Committee  on  Forest  Reservations  and  the  Protection  of  Game  this 
fact:  "We  have  more  cover  than  there  was  thirty  or  forty  years  ago, 
more  brush  probably,  but  there  is  not  one  partridge  [ruffed  grouse]  to- 
day where  there  were  twenty  ten  years  ago ! ' ' 

First  of  all,  Connecticut  needs  a  ten-year  close  season  law  to  save  her 
remnant  of  shore  birds  before  it  is  completely  annihilated.  Then  she 
needs  a  Bayne  law,  and  needs  it  badly.  Under  such  a  law,  and  the  tagging 
system  that  it  provides,  the  state  game  wardens  would  have  so  strong  a 
grip  on  the  situation  that  the  present  unlawful  sale  of  game  would  be 
completely  stopped.  Half-way  measures  in  preventing  the  sale  of  game 
will  not  answer.  Already  Connecticut  has  wasted  thousands  of  dollars 
in  fruitless  efforts  to  restock  her  desolated  woodlands  and  farms  with 
quail,  and  to  introduce  the  Hungarian  partridge;  but  even  yet  she  unll 
not  protect  her  own  native  species! 

Men  of  Connecticut,  save  the  last  remnants  of  your  native  game  birds 
before  they  are  all  utterly  exterminated  within  your  borders!  Don't 
ask  the  killers  of  game  what  they  will  agree  to,  but  make  the  laws  what 
you  know  they  should  be !  If  you  want  a  gameless  state,  let  the  destruction 
go  on  as  it  now  is  going,  with  i6,ooo  licensed  gunners  in  the  field  each  year, 
and  you  will  surely  have  it,  right  soon. 

Delaware: 

vStop  all  spring  shooting,  at  once ;  stop  killing  shore  birds  for  ten  years,  and  protect 
swans  indefinitely. 


276  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Enact  bag-limit  laws,  in  very  small  figures. 

Stop  the  sale  of  all  native  wild  game,  regardless  of  its  use,  by  enacting  a  Bayne  law. 
Enact  a  resident  license  law,  and  provide  for  a  force  of  paid  game  wardens. 
Stop  the  use  of  machine  shot-guns  in  killing  your  birds. 

The  state  of  Delaware  is  nearly  twenty  years  behind  the  times.  Can 
it  be  possible  that  her  Governor  and  her  people  are  really  satisfied  with 
that  position?  We  think  not.  I  dare  say  they  are  afflicted  with  apathy, 
and  game-hogs.  The  latter  can  easily  back  up  General  Apathy  to  an 
extent  that  spells  "no  game  laws."  In  one  act,  and  at  one  bold  stroke, 
Delaware  can  step  out  of  her  position  at  the  rear  of  the  procession  of 
states,  and  take  a  place  in  the  front  rank.  Will  she  do  it  ?  We  Lope  so, 
for  her  present  status  is  unworthy  of  any  right-minded,  red-blooded  state 
this  side  of  the  Philippines. 

District  of  Columbia: 

The  sale  of  all  native  wild  game,  regardless  of  its  source,  should  be  stopped  im- 
mediately, by  the  enactment  of  a  complete  Bayne  law. 

If  game-shooting  within  the  District  is  continued,  on  the  marshes  of  the  Eastern 
Branch  and  on  the  Potomac  River,  common  decency  demands  the  enactment  of  bag- 
limit  laws  and  long  close-season  laws  of  the  most  modern  pattern. 

Just  why  it  is  that  gross  abuses  against  wild  life  have  so  long  been 
tolerated  in  the  territorial  center  of  the  American  nation,  remains  to  be 
ascertained.  But,  whatever  the  reason  the  situation  is  absurd  and 
intolerable,  and  Congress  should  terminate  it  immediately.  As  late  as 
1897,  and  I  think  for  two  or  three  years  thereafter,  thousands  of  robins 
were  sold  every  year  in  the  public  markets  of  Washington  as  food !  As  a 
spectacle  for  gods  and  men,  behold  to-day  the  sale  of  quail,  ruffed  grouse, 
wild  turkeys  and  other  American  game,  half  way  between  the  Capitol 
and  the  White  House!  Look  at  Center  Market  as  a  national  "fence" 
for  the  sale  of  gaine  stolen  by  market  gunners  from  Maryland,  Virginia, 
the  Carolinas  and  Pennsylvania. 

It  is  time  for  Congress  to  bring  the  District  of  Columbia  sharply 
into  line ;  for  Washington  must  be  made  to  toe  the  mark  beside  New  York. 
The  reputation  of  the  national  capital  demands  it,  whether  the  gods 
of  the  cafes  will  consent  or  not. 

Florida: 

Shooting  shore  birds  and  waterfowl  in  late  winter  and  spring  should  be  stopped. 

The  sale  of  all  native  wild  game  should  be  prohibited. 

A  State  Game  Commissioner  whose  term  of  office  should  be  not  less  than  four  years, 
and  a  force  of  salaried  game  wardens,  should  be  appointed. 

A  general  resident  license  should  be  required  for  hunting. 

The  killing  of  does  and  fawns  should  be  stopped,  and  no  deer  should  be  killed  save 
bucks  with  horns  at  least  three  inches  long. 

The  bag  limit  of  five  deer  per  year  should  be  two  deer;  of  twenty  quail,  and  two 
turkeys  per  day  should  be  ten  quail  and  one  turkey. 

The  open  season  on  all  game  birds  should  end  on  February  1,  for  domestic  reasons. 

Protection  should  be  accorded  doves,  and  robins  should  be  removed  from  the  game 
list. 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED    IN    THE   STATES  277 

In  the  destruction  of  wild  life,  I  think  the  backwoods  population  of 
Florida  is  the  most  lawless  and  defiant  that  can  be  found  anywhere  in 
the  United  States.  The  "plume-hunters"  have  ])ractically  exterminated 
the  plume-bearing  egrets,  wholly  annihilated  the  roseate  spoonbill,  the 
flamingo,  and  also  the  Carolina  parrakect.  On  July  8,  1905,  one  of  them 
killed  an  Audubon  Association  Warden,  Guy  M.  Bradley,  whose  business 
it  was  to  enforce  the  state  laws  protecting  the  egret  rookeries.  The 
people  really  to  blame  for  the  shooting  of  Guy  Bradley,  and  the  exter- 
mination of  the  egrets  by  lawless  and  dangerous  men,  are  the  vain  and 
merciless  women  who  wear  the  "white  badges  of  cruelty  "  as  long  as  they 
can  be  purchased !     They  have  much  to  answer  for ! 

Originall3^  Florida  was  alive  with  bird  life.  For  number  of  species, 
abundance  of  individuals,  and  general  dispersal  throughout  the  whole 
state,  I  think  no  other  state  in  America  except  possibly  California  ever 
possessed  a  bird  fauna  quite  comparable  with  it.  Once  its  bird  life  was 
one  of  the  wonders  of  America.  But  the  gunners  began  early  to  shoot, 
and  shoot,  and  shoot.  During  the  fifteen  years  preceding  1898,  the  general 
bird  life  of  Florida  decreased  in  volume  77  per  cent.  In  1900  it  was  at  a 
very  low  point,  and  it  has  steadily  continued  to  decrease.  The  rapidly- 
growing  settlement  and  cultivation  of  the  state  has  of  course  had  much 
to  do  with  the  disappearance  of  wild  life  generally,  and  the  draining  and 
exploitation  of  the  Everglades  will  about  finish  the  birds  of  southern 
Florida. 

The  brown  pelicans'  breeding-place  on  Pelican  Island,  in  Indian  River, 
has  been  taken  in  hand  by  the  national  government  as  a  bird  refuge, 
and  its  marvelous  spectacle  of  pelican  life  is  now  protected.  Nine  other 
islands  on  the  coast  of  Florida  have  been  taken  as  national  bird  refuges, 
and  will  render  posterity  good  service. 

The  great  private  game  and  bird  preserve  of  Dr.  Ray  V.  Pierce,  at 
Apalachicola,  known  as  St.  Vincent  Island,  containing  twenty  square 
miles  of  wonderful  woods  and  waters,  is  performing  an  important  func- 
tion for  the  state  and  the  nation. 

The  Forida  bag  limit  on  quail  is  entirely  too  liberal.  I  know  one  man 
who  never  once  exceeded  the  limit  of  twenty  birds  per  day,  but  in  the 
season  of  1908-9  he  killed  86 j  quail!  Can  the  quail  of  an}'  state  long 
endure  such  drains  as  that? 

From  a  zoological  point  of  view,  Florida  is  in  bad  shape.  A  great 
many  of  her  people  who  shoot  are  desperately  lawless  and  uncontrollable, 
and  the  state  is  not  financially  able  to  support  a  force  of  wardens  suffi- 
ciently strong  to  enforce  the  laws,  even  as  they  are.  It  looks  as  if  the 
slaughter  would  go  on  tmtil  nothing  of  bird  life  remains.  At  present  I 
can  see  no  hope  whatever  for  saving  even  a  good  remnant  of  the  wild  life 
of  the  state. 

The  present  status  of  wild-life  protective  laws  in  Florida  was  made  the 
subject  of  an  article  in  Forest  and  Stream  of  August  10,  1912,  by  John 
H.  Wallace,  Jr.,  Game  Commissioner  of  the  State  of  Alabama,  in  an 
article  entitled  "The  Florida  Situation."     In  view  of  his  record,  no  one 


278  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

will  question  either  the  value  or  the  honest  sincerity  of  Mr.  Wallace's 
opinions.    The  following  paragraphs  are  from  that  article: 

The  enactment  of  a  model  and  modern  game  law  for  the  State  of  Florida  is  abso- 
lutely imperative  in  order  to  save  many  of  the  most  valuable  species  of  birds  and  game 
of  that  State  from  certain  depletion  and  threatened  extinction.  The  question  of  the 
protection  of  the  birds  and  game  in  Florida  is  not  a  local  one,  but  is  national  in  its  scope. 
Birds  know  no  state  lines,  and  while  practically  all  the  States  lying  to  the  north  of  Florida 
protect  migratory  birds  and  waterfowl,  yet  these  are  recklessly  slaughtered  in  that 
state  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be  appalling  to  all  sportsmen  and  bird  lovers. 

So  alarming  has  become  the  decrease  of  the  birds  and  game  of  Florida  that  unless 
a  halt  is  called  on  the  campaign  of  reckless  annihilation  that  has  been  ceaselessly  waged 
in  that  state,  the  sport  and  recreation  enjoyed  by  primeval  nimrods  will  linger  only  in 
history  and  tradition. 

It  is  the  sincerest  hope  of  all  lovers  of  wild  life  of  the  American  continent  that  a 
strong  and  invincible  sentiment,  relative  to  the  imperative  necessity  of  real  conservation 
legislation,  be  crystallized  in  the  minds  of  the  members  elect  of  the  Florida  Legislature, 
to  the  end  that  the  next  Legislature  will  spread  upon  the  statute  books  of  the  State  of 
Florida  a  model  and  modern  law  for  the  preservation  and  protection  of  the  birds  and 
game  of  that  State,  which  when  put  into  practical  operation  will  elicit  the  thanks  of 
all  good  citizens,  and  likewise  the  gratitude  of  future  generations. 

Georgia: 

Prohibit  late  winter  and  spring  shooting,  and  provide  rational  seasons  for  wild  fowl. 
Reduce  the  limit  on  deer  to  two  bucks  a  season,  with  horns  not  less  than  three  inches 
long. 

Protect  the  meadow  lark  and  stop  forever  the  killing  of  doves  and  wood-ducks. 
Prohibit  the  use  of  automatic  and  pump  shot-guns  in  hunting. 
Extend  the  term  of  the  game  commissioner  to  four  years. 

We  are  glad  to  report  that  Georgia  has  already  begun  to  take  up  the 
white  man's  burden.  The  protection  of  wild  Hfe  is  now  a  gentleman's 
proposition,  and  in  it  every  real  man  with  red  blood  in  his  veins  has  a  duty 
to  perform.  The  state  of  Georgia  has  recently  awakened,  and  under  the 
comprehensive  law  of  1911  has  resolutely  undertaken  to  do  her  whole 
duty  in  this  matter. 

Idaho: 

The  imperative  duties  of  Idaho  are  as  follows : 

Stop  all  hunting  of  mountain  sheep,  mountain  goat  and  elk. 

Give  the  sage  grouse  and  sharp-tail  ten-year   close    seasons,  at  once,  to  forestall' 
their  extermination. 

Stop  the  killing  of  doves  as  "game." 

Stop  the  kiUing  of  female  deer,  and  of  bucks  with  horns  less  than  three  inches  long. 

Enact  the  model  law  to  protect  non-game  birds. 

Prohibit  the  use  of  machine  shot-guns  in  hunting. 

Extend  the  State  Warden's  term  to  four  years. 

Like  Montana,  Wyoming  and  Colorado,  the  state  of  Idaho  has  wasted 
her  stock  of  game,  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  several  species  are  now  about 
to  disappear  from  that  state.  I  am  told  that  the  sage  grouse  is  almost 
"gone";  and  I  think  that  the  antelope,  caribou,  and  mountain  st.eep 
are  in  the  same  condition  of  scarcity. 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED    IN    THE    STATES  279 

If  the  people  of  Idaho  wish  to  save  their  wild  fauna,  they  must  be  up 
and  doing.  The  time  to  temporize,  theorize,  be  conservative  and  easy- 
going has  gone  by.  It  is  that  fatal  policy  that  causes  men  to  slumber 
until  it  is  too  late  to  act;  and  we  will  watch  with  keen  interest  to  see 
whether  the  real  men  of  Idaho  are  big  enough  to  do  their  whole  duty  in 
time  to  benefit  their  state. 

In  1910,  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer  credited  Idaho  with  the  possession  of  about 
five  hundred  moose  and  two  hundred  antelope. 

There  is  one  feature  of  the  Idaho  game  law  that  may  well  stand  un- 
changed. The  open  season  on  "ibex,"  of  which  one  per  year  may  be 
killed,  may  as  well  be  continued.  One  myth  per  year  is  not  an  extravagant 
bag  for  any  intelligent  hunter;  and  it  seems  that  the  "ibex  "  will  not  down. 
Being  officially  recognized  by  Idaho,  its  place  in  our  fauna  now  seems 
assured. 

Illinois: 

Enact  a  Bayne  law,  and  stop  tlie  sale  of  all  native  wild  game,  regardless  of  source, 
and  regardless  of  the  gay  revelers  of  Chicago. 

In  Illinois  the  bag  limits  on  birds  are  nearly  all  at  least  oO  per  cent  too  high.  They 
should  be  as  follows:  No  squirrels,  doves  or  shore  birds;  six  quail,  five  woodcock, 
ten  coots,  ten  rail,  ten  ducks,  three  geese  and  three  brant,  with  a  total  limit  of  ten 
waterfowl  per  day. 

Doves  should  be  removed  from  the  game  list. 

All  tree  squirrels  and  chipmunks  should  be  perpetually  protected,  as  companions 
to  man,  unfit  for  food. 

The  sale  of  aigrettes  should  be  stopped,  and  Chicago  placed  in  the  same  class  as 
Boston,  New  York,  New  Orleans  and  San  Francisco. 

The  use  of  all  machine  shotguns  in  hunting  should  be  prohibited. 

The  chief  plague-spots  for  the  grinding  up  of  American  game  are 
Chicago,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  New  Orleans  and  San  Francisco. 
St.  Louis  cleared  her  record  in  1909.  New  York  thoroughly  cleaned  her 
Augean  stable  in  191 1,  and  Massachusetts  won  her  Bayne  law  by  a  desper- 
ate battle  in  1912.  In  1913,  Pennsylvania  probably  will  enact  a  Bayne 
law. 

Fancy  a  city  in  the  center  of  the  United  States  sending  to  Norway  for 
1,500  ptarmigan,  to  eat,  as  Chicago  did  in  1911;  and  that  was  only  one 
order. 

For  forty  years  the  marshes,  prairies,  farms  and  streams  of  the  whole 
■^^ — Upper  Mississippi  Valley  have  been  combed  year  after  year  by  the  guns 
of  the  market  shooters.  Often  the  migratory  game  was  located  by  tele- 
graphic reports.  Game  birds  were  slain  by  the  wagon-load,  boat-load, 
barrel,  and  car-load,  "for  the  Chicago  market."  And  the  fool  farmers  of 
the  Middle  West  stoHdly  plowed  their  fields  and  fed  their  hogs,  and  per- 
mitted the  slaughter  to  go  on.  To-day  the  sons  of  those  farmers  go  to 
the  museums  and  zoological  parks  of  the  cities  to  see  specimens  of  pin- 
nated grouse,  crane,  woodcock,  ducks  and  other  species  that  the  market 
shooters  have  "wiped  out";  and  their  fathers  wax  eloquent  in  telling 
of  the  flocks  of  pigeons  that  "darkened  the  sky,"  and  the  big  droves  of 


280  OVR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

prairie  chickens  that  used  to  rise  out  of  the  corn-fields  "with  a  roar  Hke  a 
coming  storm." 

To-day,  Chicago  stands  half-way  reformed.  Her  markets  are  open 
to  only  one-half  the  game  killable  in  Illinois,  but  they  are  wide  open  to  all 
"legally  killed  game  imported  from  other  states,  from  Oct.  1  to  Feb.  1." 
Through  that  hole  in  her  game  laws  any  game-dealer  can  drive  a  moving- 
van!  Of  course,  any  game  offered  in  Chicago  has  been  "legally  killed  in 
some  other  state!"    Who  can  prove  otherwise? 

In  addition  to  the  imported  game  illegally  killed  in  other  states,  the 
starving  population  of  Chicago  may  also  buy  for  cash,  and  consume  with 
their  champagne  in  November  and  December,  all  the  Illinois  doves  that 
can  be  combed  out  by  the  market-gunners. 

After  the  awful  Iroquois  Theatre  fire  in  Chicago,  in  1903,  the  game 
dealers  reported  a  heavy  falling  off  in  the  consumption  of  game!  The 
tragedy  caused  the  temporary  closing  of  the  theaters,  and  the  falling  ofiE 
in  after-theater  suppers  may  be  said  to  have  taken  away  the  appetites 
of  thousands  of  erstwhile  consumers  of  game.  Incidentally  it  showed  who 
consumes  purchased  game. 

The  people  of  Illinois  should  now  enact  a  full-fledged  Bayne  law, 
without  changing  a  single  word,  and  bring  Chicago  up  to  the  level  of 
New  York,  St.  Louis  and  Boston. 

The  present  bag  limits  on  Illinois  game  birds  are  fatally  high.  As 
they  stand,  with  190,000  licensed  gunners  in  the  field  each  year,  what 
else  do  they  mean  than  extermination?  The  men  of  Illinois  have  just 
two  alternatives  between  which  to  choose :  drastic  and  immediate  pre- 
servation, or  a  gameless  state.    Which  shall  it  be? 

Indiana: 

Indiana  should  hasten  to  stop  spring  shooting. 

She  should  enact  a  law,  prohibiting  the  sale  for  millinery  purposes  of  the  plumage 
of  all  wild  birds  save  ducks  killed  in  their  open  season. 

A  Bayne  law,  absolutely  prohibiting  the  sale  of  all  native  wild  game,  should  be 
enacted  at  once. 

The  killing  of  squirrels  should  be  prohibited;  because  they  are  not  white  men's  game. 

Ruffed  grouse  and  quail  should  have  five  year  close  seasons. 

The  use  of  pump  and  autoloading  guns  in  hunting  should  be  prohibited. 

In  Indiana  the  white-tailed  deer  is  extinct.  This  means  very  close 
hunting,  and  a  bad  outlook  for  all  other  game  larger  than  the  sparrow. 
On  October  2,  1912,  eleven  heads  of  greater  bird  of  paradise,  with  plumes 
attached,  were  offered  for  sale  within  one  hundred  feet  of  the  head- 
quarters of  the  Fourth  National  Conservation  Congress.  The  prices 
ranged  from  $35  to  $47.50;  and  while  we  looked,  two  ladies  came  up,  one 
of  whom  pointed  to  a  bird-of -paradise  corpse  and  said:  "There!  I  want 
one  o'  them,  an'  I'm  a-goin'  to  have  it,  too!" 

Iowa: 

Spring  shooting  should  be  stopped,  at  once  and  forever. 


NFAV  LAWS  NEEDED   IN    THE   STATES  281 

The  killing  of  all  tree  squirrels  and  chipmunks  should  cease. 

All  shore  birds  that  visit  Iowa  deserve  a  five-year  close  season. 

Especially  is  the  shooting  of  plover,  sandpiper,  marsh  and  beach  birds,  rail,  duck, 
geese  and  brant  from  September  1,  to  April  15,  an  outrage. 

Iowa  should  prohibit  the  use  of  the  machine  guns,  and  it  is  to  be  hojied  that  she 
will  awaken  sufficiently  to  do  so. 

It  is  said  that  the  Indian  word  " Iowa "  means  "the  drowsy,  or  sleepy 
ones."  Politically,  and  educationally,  Iowa  is  all  right,  but  in  the  pro- 
tection of  wild  life  she  is  ten  years  behind  the  times,  in  almost  everything 
save  the  prohibition  of  the  sale  of  game.  Iowa  knows  better  than  to  pursue 
the  course  that  she  does!  She  boasts  about  her  corn  and  hogs,  but  she  is 
deaf  to  the  appeals  of  the  states  surrounding  her  on  the  subject  of  spring 
shooting.  For  years  Minnesota  has  set  her  a  good  example ;  but  nothing 
moves  her  to  step  up  where  she  belongs  in  the  phalanx  of  intelligent  game- 
protecting  states. 

The  foregoing  may  sound  harsh,  but  in  view  of  what  other  states  have 
endured  from  Iowa's  stubbornness  regarding  migratory  game,  the  time 
for  silent  treatment  of  her  case  has  gone  by.  She  is  to-day  in  the  same 
class  as  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina  and  Maryland,- — at  the  tail  end 
of  the  procession  of  states.  She  cares  everything  for  corn  and  hogs,  but 
little  for  wild  life. 

Kansas: 

Spring  shooting  should  be  stopped,  at  once;  with  apologies  for  not  having  done  so 
long  ago. 

The  continued  shooting  of  prairie  chickens  when  the  species  is  near  extermination 
is  outrageous,  and  should  be  prohibited  for  ten  years. 

Doves  should  be  removed  permanently  from  the  game  list,  partly  as  a  measure  of 
self  respect. 

Kansas  should  treat  herself  to  a  force  of  salaried  game  wardens  rendering  real  service. 

vSlie  should  bar  out  the  machine  guns  as  unfit  for  use  in  a  well-regulated  State. 

Kansas  has  calmly  witnessed  the  extermination  of  her  bison,  elk, 
deer,  antelope,  wild  turkeys,  sage  grouse,  whooping  cranes,  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  end  of  her  pinnated  grouse,  without  a  pang.  What  is  wild 
game  in  comparison  with  fat  hogs,  and  seventy-bushels-to-the-acre ! 

Draw  a  line  around  the  hog-and-corn  area  of  the  United  States,  and 
within  it  you  will  find  more  spring  shooting,  more  sale  of  game  and  more 
extermination  of  species  than  in  any  other  area  in  the  United  States.  I 
refer  to  Nebraska,  Kansas,  Iowa,  Missouri,  Illinois,  Indiana,  Ohio, 
Kentucky  and  Tennessee.  In  not  one  of  these  states  except  Missouri 
is  there  any  big  game  hunting,  and  in  the  majority  of  them  spring  shoot- 
ing is  la\vful ! 

In  the  Island  of  Mauritius,  it  was  swine  that  exterminated  the  dodo. 
In  the  United  States,  hogs  and  game  extermination  still  go  hand  in  hand. 
Since  the  days  of  the  dodo,  however,  a  new  species  of  swine  has  been 
developed.  It  is  now  widely  known  as  the  "game-hog,"  and  it  has  been 
officially  recognized  by  both  bench  and  bar. 


282  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Kentucky  : 

Nearly  everything  that  a  state  should  maintain  in  the  line  of  wild  life 
protection  Kentucky  lacks!  It  is  easier  to  tell  what  she  has  than  to  recite 
what  she  should  have.  Kentucky  permits  spring  shooting;  she  has  no 
bag  limits,  and  she  has  long  open  seasons  on  everything  save  introduced 
pheasants;  She  protects  from  sale  only  quail,  grouse  and  wild  turkey 
killed  within  her  own  borders.  This  means  that  her  markets  are  practically 
wide  open. 

Until  recently  the  people  of  Kentucky  have  been  very  indifferent  to 
the  value  of  her  wild-life ;  but  with  the  new  law  enacted  this  year  providing 
for  a  game  commission  and  a  game  protection  fund,  surely  every  member 
of  the  Army  of  the  Defense  will  wish  God-speed  to  her  efforts  in  game 
conservation,  and  stand  ready  to  lend  a  helping  hand  whenever  help  can 
be  utilized. 

Kentucky  should  at  one  grand  coup  stop  spring  shooting  and  all  sale 
of  wild  game,  accord  long  close  seasons  to  all  species  that  are  verging  on 
extinction,  protect  doves,  establish  moderate  bag  limits  and  stop  the  use  of 
machine  guns.  If  she  takes  up  these  measures  at  the  rate  of  only  one 
at  each  legislative  session,  by  the  time  her  laws  are  perfect  all  her  game 
will  be  gone! 

Louisiana: 

On  more  counts  than  one,  Louisiana  is  in  the  list  of  Great  Delin- 
quents ;  for  behold  the  things  that  she  needs  to  do : 

Protect  deer  for  five  years. 

Instantly  take  the  robin,  red-winged  black-bird,  dove,  grosbeak,  wood-duck  and 
gull  oflf  the  list  of  birds  that  may  be  killed  as  "game." 

Stop  all  late  winter  and  spring  shooting. 

Stop  the  sale  of  all  native  game,  and  the  possession  and  transportation  of  game  sold 
or  intended  for  sale.     In  short. 

Enact  a  Bayne  law. 

Re-establish  a  game  warden  system. 

In  legally  permitting  the  slaughter  of  the  robin,  red-winged  black- 
bird, dove,  grosbeak,  wood -duck  and  gull  the  state  of  Louisiana  is  very 
culpable. 

For  good  reasons,  forty  states  of  the  American  Union  strictly  prohibit 
the  killing  of  song  and  insectivorous  birds.  The  duty  of  every  state  to 
protect  those  birds  is  not  a  debatable  proposition.  I  put  this  question 
to  the  people  of  Louisiana,  Mississippi,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee  and 
other  states  where  the  robin  is  treated  as  a  game  bird :  Is  it  fair  of  you 
to  kill  and  eat  robins  when  that  species  is  carefully  protected  by  forty 
other  states  of  our  country  for  grave  economic  reasons?  What  would 
you  say  of  the  people  of  the  North  if  they  slaughtered  your  mocking- 
bird to  eat! 

Remember  this  proportion: 

The  Robin  :  The  North  :  :  The  Mockingbird  :  The  South. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

NEW  LAWS  NEEDED  IN  THE  STATES 

(Continued) 
Maine: 

There  are  reasons  for  the  beHef  that  Maine  is  conserving  her  large 
game  better  than  any  other  state  or  province  in  North  America.  One 
glance  over  her  laws  is  sufficient  to  convince  anyone  that  instead  of  study- 
ing the  clamor  of  her  shooting  population,  Maine  has  actually  been 
studying  the  needs  of  her  game,  and  providing  for  those  needs.  If  all 
■other  states  were  doing  equally  well,  the  task  of  writing  a  book  of  ad- 
monition would  have  been  unnecessary.  The  proof  of  Maine's  alertness 
is  to  be  found  in  the  number  of  her  extra  short,  or  entirely  closed,  seasons 
on  game.    For  example: 

Cow  and  calf  moose  are  permanently  protected. 

Only  bull  moose,  with  at  least  two  3-inch  prongs  on  its  horns,  may  be  killed. 

Caribou  have  had  a  close  season  since  1899. 

On  gray  and  black  squirrels,  doves  and  quail,  there  is  no  open  season. 

The  open  season  for  deer  varies  from  ten  weeks  to  four  weeks,  and  in  parts  of  three 
counties  there  is  no  open  season  at  all. 

Silencers  are  prohibited,  and  firearms  in  forests  may  be  prohibited  by  the  Governor 
during  droughts. 

Nearly  all  wild-fowl  shooting  ends  January  1,  but  in  two  places,  on  December  1. 

People  who  have  not  learned  the  facts  habitually  think  of  Maine  as  a 
vast  killing-ground  for  deer;  and  it  is  well  for  it  to  be  known  that  the 
hunting-grounds  have  been  carefully  designated,  according  to  the 
abundance  or  scarcity  of  game. 

Maine  has  wisely  chosen  to  regard  her  hunting-grounds  and  her  deer 
as  a  valuable  asset,  and  she  manages  them  accordingly.  To  be  a  guide 
in  that  state  is  to  be  a  good  citizen,  and  a  protector  of  game  from  illegal 
slaughter.  No  non-resident  may  hunt  without  a  licensed  guide.  The 
licenses  for  the  thousands  of  deer  killed  in  Maine  each  year,  and  the 
expenses  of  the  visiting  sportsmen  who  hunt  them,  annually  bring  into 
the  state  and  leave  there  a  huge  sum  of  money,  variously  estimated  at 
from  $2,000,000  to  $3,000,000.  One  can  only  guess  at  the  amount  from 
the  number  of  non-resident  licenses  i.ssued;  but  certainly  the  total  can 
not  be  less  than  $1,000,000. 

Although  Mr.  L.  T.  Carleton  is  no  longer  chairman  of  the  Commission 
of  Inland  Fisheries  and  Game,  the  splendid  services  that  he  rendered  the 
state  of  Maine  during  his  thirteen  years  of  service,  especially  in  the 
creation  of  a  good  code  of  game  laws,  constitute  an  imperishable  monu- 
ment to  his  name  and  fame. 


284  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

There  is  very  little  that  Maine  needs  in  the  line  of  new  legislation,  or 
better  protection  to  her  game.  With  the  enactment  of  a  resident  license 
law  and  a  five-year  close  season  for  woodcock,  plover,  snipe  and  sand- 
pipers, I  think  her  laws  for  the  protection  of  wild  life  would  be  sufficiently 
perfect  for  all  practical  purposes.  The  Pine-Tree  State  is  to  be  con- 
gratulated upon  its  wise  and  efficient  handling  of  the  wild-life  situation. 

Maryland: 

How  has  it  come  to  pass  that  Maryland  lacks  more  good  wild-life  laws 
than  any  other  state  in  the  Union  except  North  Carolina  ?  Of  the  really 
fundamental  protective  laws,  embracing  the  list  that  to  every  self- 
respecting  state  seems  indispensable,  Maryland  has  almost  none  save 
certain  bag-limit  laws!  Otherwise,  the  state  is  wide  open!  It  is  indeed 
high  time  that  she  should  abandon  her  present  attitude  of  hostility  to 
wild  life,  and  become  a  good  neighbor.  She  should  do  what  is  fair  and 
right  about  the  protection  of  the  migratory  game  and  bird  life  that  an- 
nually passes  twice  through  her  territory! 

At  the  last  session  of  the  Maryland  legislature,  the  law  preventing 
the  use  of  power  boats  in  wild-fowl  shooting  was  repealed.  That  was  a 
step  ten  years  backward ;  and  Maryland  should  be  ashamed  of  it  I 

The  list  of  things  that  Maryland  must  do  in  order  to  clear  her  record 
is  a  long  one.     Here  it  is: 

Local  regulations  should  be  replaced  by  a  uniform  state  law. 

The  sale  of  all  native  wild  game  should  be  stopped. 

Spring  and  late  winter  shooting  of  game  should  be  stopped. 

All  non-game  birds  not  already  included  under  the  statutes  should  be  protected. 

The  exportation  of  all  game  should  be  prohibited,  unless  accompanied  by  the  man 
who  shot  it,  bearing  his  license,  and  the  law  should  be  state- wide  instead  of  depending 
upon  a  separate  enactment  for  each  county. 

There  should  be  a  hunter's  license  law  for  all  who  hunt. 

The  use  of  machine  shotguns  in  hunting  should  be  stopped,  at  once. 

Stop  the  use  of  power  boats  in  wild-fowl  shooting. 

Massachusetts  : 

In  1912  the  state  of  Massachusetts  moved  up  into  the  foremost  rank 
of  states,  where  for  one  year  New  York  had  stood  alone.  She  passed  a 
counterpart  of  the  New  York  law,  absolutely  prohibiting  the  sale  of  all 
wild  American  game  in  Massachusetts,  but  providing  for  the  sale  of  game 
that  has  been  reared  in  preserves  and  tagged  by  state  officers.  This 
victory  was  achieved  only  after  three  months  of  hard  fighting.  The 
coalition  of  sportsmen,  zoologists  and  friends  of  wild  life  in  general 
proved  irresistible,  just  as  a  similar  union  of  forces  accomplished  the 
Bayne  law  in  New  York  in  1911.  The  victory  is  highly  instructive,  as 
great  victories  usually  are.  It  proves  once  more  that  whenever  the 
American  people  can  be  aroused  from  their  normal  apathy  regarding 
wild  life,  any  good  conservation  legislation  can  be  enacted!  The  prime 
necessities  to  success  are  good  measures,  good  management,  a  reasonable 


NEW   LAWS    NEEDED    IN    THE   STATES  285 

campaign  fund,  and  tireless  energy  and  persistence.  Massachusetts  is 
to  be  roundly  congratulated  on  having  so  thoroughly  cleaned  up  her 
sale-of-game  situation. 

Incidentally,  five  bills  for  the  repeal  of  the  IVIassachusetts  law  against 
spring  shooting  were  introduced,  and  each  one  went  down  to  the  defeat 
that  it  deserved.  The  repeal  of  a  spring-shooting  law,  anywhere,  is  a  step 
backward  ten  years! 

Massachusetts  needs  a  bag-limit  law  more  in  keeping  with  her  small 
remnant  of  wild  life;  and  that  she  will  have  ere  long.  Very  soon,  also, 
her  sportsmen  will  raise  the  standard  of  ethics  in  shotgun  shooting,  by 
barring  out  the  automatic  and  pump  shotguns  so  much  beloved  by  the 
market  shooters.  As  matters  stand  at  this  date  (1912)  the  Old  Bay  State 
needs  the  following  new  laws: 

Low  bag  limits  on  all  game. 

Five-year  close  seasons  on  all  shore  birds,  snipe  and  woodcock. 

Expulsion  of  the  automatic  and  pump  shotguns,  in  hunting. 

Michigan: 

On  the  whole,  the  game  laws  of  Michigan  are  in  excellent  shape,  and 
leave  little  to  be  desired  in  the  line  of  betterment  except  to  be  simplified. 
All  the  game  protected  by  the  laws  of  the  state  is  debarred  from  sale; 
squirrels,  pinnated  grouse,  doves  and  wild  turkeys  enjoy  long  close 
seasons ;  the  bag  limits  on  deer  and  game  birds  are  reasonably  low ;  spring 
shooting  still  is  possible  on  nine  species  of  ducks;  and  this  should  be 
stopped  without  delay. 

Only  three  or  four  suggestions  are  in  order : 

All  spring  shooting  should  be  prohibited. 

All  shore  birds  should  have  a  five-year  close  season. 

The  use  of  the  machine  shotguns  in  hunting  should  be  stopped. 

The  laws  should  permit  the  sale,  under  tag,  of  all  species  of  game  that  can  success- 
fully be  reared  in  preserves  on  a  commerciTl  basis. 

Two  or  three  state  game  preserves,  for  deer,  each  at  least  four  miles  square,  sliould 
be  established  without  delay. 

Minnesota: 

This  state  sliould  at  once  enact  a  bag-limit  law  that  will  do  some  good,  instead  of 
the  statutory  farce  now  on  the  books.  Make  it  fifteen  birds  per  day  of  waterfowl,  all 
species  combined,  and  no  grouse  or  quail. 

There  should  be  five-year  close  seasons  enacted  for  (]uail,  grouse,  plover,  woodcock, 
snipe,  and  all  other  shore  birds. 

A  law  sliould  be  enacted  pro]iil:)iting  the  use  of  firearms  by  unnaturalized  aliens, 
and  a  S2()  license  for  all  naturalized  aliens. 

Provision  should  be  made  for  a  large  state  game  refuge  in  southern  Minnesota. 

The  state  should  prohibit  the  use  of  machine  guns  in  hunting. 

To-day,  direct  and  reliable  advices  show  that  the  game  situation 
in  Minnesota  is  far  from  encouraging.     Several  species  are  threatened 


286  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

with  extinction  at  an  early  date.  In  northern  Minnesota  it  is 
reported  that  much  game  is  surreptitiously  trapped  and  slaughtered.  The 
bob  white  is  reported  as  threatened  with  total  extinction  at  an  early  date ; 
but  I  think  the  prairie  chicken  will  be  the  first  bird  species  to  go.  Moose 
will  soon  be  extinct  everj^where  in  Minnesota  except  in  the  game  pre- 
serves. Apparently  there  is  now  about  one  duck  in  Minnesota  for  every 
ten  ducks  that  were  there  only  ten  years  ago. 

Now,  what  is  Minnesota  going  to  do  about  all  this?  Is  she  willing 
through  Apathy  to  become  a  gameless  state  ?  Her  people  need  to  arouse 
themselves  now,  and  pass  several  strong  laws.  Her  bag  limit  of  forty-five 
birds  per  day  of  quail,  grouse,  woodcock  and  plover,  and  fifty  per  day  of 
the  waterbirds,  is  a  joke,  and  nothing  more;  but  it  is  no  laughing  matter. 
It  spells  extermination. 

Mississippi: 

The  legalized  slaughter  of  robins,  cedar  birds,  grosbeaks  and  doves  should  cease 
immediately,  on  the  basis  of  economy  of  resources  and  a  square  deal  to  all  the  states 
lying  northward  of  Mississippi. 

The  shooting  of  all  water-fowl  should  cease  on  January  1 . 

A  reasonable  limit  should  be  established  on  deer. 

A  hunting  license  law  should  be  passed  at  once,  fixing  the  fee  at  $1  and  devoting 
the  revenue  to  the  pay  of  a  corps  of  non-political  game  wardens,  selected  on  a  basis  of 
ability  and  fitness. 

The  administration  of  the  game  laws  should  be  placed  in  charge  of  a  salaried  game 
commissioner. 

It  is  seriously  to  the  discredit  of  Mississippi  that  her  laws  actually 
classify  robins,  cedar-birds,  grosbeaks  and  doves  as  "game,"  and  make 
them  killable  as  such  from  Sept.  i  to  March  i!  I  should  think  that  if  no 
economic  consideration  carried  weight  in  Mississippi,  state  pride  alone 
would  be  sufficient  to  promote  a  correction  of  the  evil.  If  we  of  the 
North  were  to  slaughter  mockingbirds  for  food,  when  they  come  North 
to  visit  us,  the  men  of  the  South  would  call  us  greedy  barbarians;  and 
they  would  be  quite  right. 

Missouri: 

The  Missouri  bag  limits  that  permit  the  killing  or  possession  of  fifty  birds  per  day 
are  absurd,  and  fatally  liberal.  The  utmost  should  be  twenty-five;  and  even  that  is 
too  high. 

Doves  should  be  taken  off  the  list  of  game  birds,  and  protected  throughout  the  year; 
and  so  should  all  tree  squirrels. 

Spring  shooting  of  shore  birds  and  waterfowl  should  be  prohibited  without  delay. 

A  law  against  automatic  and  pump  guns  should  be  enacted  at  the  next  legislative 
session,  as  a  public  lesson  on  the  raising  of  the  standard  of  ethics  in  shooting. 

The  state  of  Missouri  is  really  strong  in  her  position  as  a  game- 
protecting  state.  She  perpetually  protects  such  vanishing  species  as  the 
ruffed  grouse,  prairie  chicken  (pinnated  grouse),  woodcock,  and  all  her 
shore  birds  save  snipe  and  plover.  She  prohibits  the  sale  of  native  game 
and  the  killing  of  female  deer ;  but  she  wisely  permits  the  sale  of  preserve- 


NEW  LAWS    NEEDED    IN    THE    STATES  287 

bred  elk  and  deer  under  the  tags  of  the  State  Game  Commission.  For 
nearly  all  the  wild  game  that  is  accessible,  her  markets  are  tightly  closed. 
We  heartily  congratulate  Missouri  on  her  advanced  position  on  the 
sale  of  game,  and  we  hope  that  the  people  of  Iowa  will  even  yet  profit  by 
her  good  example. 

Montana; 

Like  Colorado  and  "Wyoming,  Montana  is  wasting  a  valuable  heritage 
of  wild  game  while  she  struggles  to  maintain  the  theory  that  she  still  is 
in  the  list  of  states  that  furnish  big-game  hunting.  It  is  a  fact  that  ten 
years  ago  most  sportsmen  began  to  regard  Montana  as  a  has-been  for 
big  game,  and  began  to  seek  better  hunting-grounds  elsewhere.  British 
Columbia,  Alberta  and  Alaska  have  done  much  for  the  game  of  Montana 
by  drawing  sportsmen  away  from  it.  Mr.  Henry  Avare,  the  State  Game 
Warden,  is  optimistic  regarding  even  the  big  game,  and  believes  that 
it  is  holding  its  own.  This  is  partially  true  of  white-tailed  deer,  or  it  was 
up  to  the  time  of  great  slaughter.  It  is  said  that  in  1911,  11,000  deer 
were  killed  in  Montana,  all  in  the  western  part  of  the  state,  seventy  per 
cent  of  which  were  white-tails.  The  deep  snows  and  extreme  cold  of  a 
long  and  unusually  severe  winter  drove  the  hungry  deer  down  out  of  the 
mountains  into  the  settlements,  where  the  ranchmen  jo^'ously  slaughtered 
them.  The  destruction  around  Kalispell  was  described  by  Harry  P. 
Stanford  as  "sickening." 

Mr.  Avare  estimates  the  prong-horned  antelope  in  Montana  at  three 
thousand  head,  of  which  about  six  hundred  are  under  the  quasi -protection 
of  four  ranches. 

The  antelope  need  three  or  four  small  ranges,  such  as  the  Snow  Creek  Antelope 
Range,  where  the  bad  lands  are  too  rough  for  ranchmen,  but  quite  right  for  antelopes 
and  other  big  game. 

All  the  grouse  and  ptarmigan  of  Montana  need  a  five-year  close  season.  The 
splendid  sage  grouse  is  now  extinct  in  many  parts  of  its  previous  range.  Fifty-eight 
thousand  licensed  gunners  are  too  many  for  them ! 

The  few  mountain  sheep  and  mountain  goats  that  survive  should  have  a  five-year 
close  season,  at  once. 

The  killing  of  female  hoofed  animals  should  be  prohibited  by  law. 

Montana  has  not  yet  adopted  the  model  law  for  the  protection  of  non-game  birds. 
Only  seven  states  have  failed  in  that  respect. 

The  use  of  automatic  and  pump  shotguns,  and  silencers,  should  immediately  be 
prohibited. 

Montana's  bag-limits  are  not  wholly  bad;  but  the  grizzly  bear  has 
almost  been  exterminated,  save  in  the  Yellowstone  Park.  vSome  of 
these  days,  if  things  go  on  as  they  are  now  going,  the  people  of  Montana 
will  be  rudely  awakened  to  the  fact  that  they  have  50,000  licensed  hunters 
but  no  longer  any  killable  game!  And  then  we  will  hear  enthusiastic 
talk  about  "restocking." 

Nebraska: 

No  other  state  has  bestowed  close  seasons  upon  as  many  extinct  species 


288  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

of  game  as  Nebraska.  Behold  how  she  has  resolutely  locked  the  doors  of 
her  empty  cage  after  all  these  species  have  flown:  Elk,  antelope,  wild 
turkey,  passenger  pigeon,  whooping  crane,  sage  grouse,  ptarmigan  and 
curlew.  In  a  short  time  the  pinnated  grouse  can  be  added  to  the  list 
of  has-beens. 

There  is  little  to  say  regarding  the  future  of  the  game  of  Nebraska; 
for  its  "future"  is  now  history. 

Provision  should  be  made  for  one  or  more  state  game  preserves. 
Spring  shooting  of  shore  birds  and  waterfowl  should  be  prohibited. 
A  larger  and  more  effective  warden  service  should  be  provided. 
Doves  should  be  removed  from  the  game  list. 

Nevada: 

The  sage  grouse  should  be  given  a  ten-year  close  season,  for  recuperation. 

All  non-game  birds  should  have  perpetual  protection. 

The  cranes,  now  verging  on  extinction,  and  the  pigeons  and  doves  should  at  once 
be  taken  out  of  the  list  of  game  birds,  and  forever  protected. 

All  the  shore  birds  need  five  years  of  close  protection. 

A  State  Game  Warden  whose  term  of  office  is  not  less  than  four  years  should  be 
provided  for. 

A  corps  of  salaried  game  protectors  should  be  chosen  for  active  and  aggressive  game 
protection. 

Nevada's  bag  limits  are  among  the  best  of  any  state,  the  only  serious  flaw  being 
"  10  sage  grouse"  per  day:   which  should  be  0! 

Nevada  still  has  a  few  antelope ;  and  we  beg  her  to  protect  them  all  from 
being  hunted  or  killed!  It  is  my  belief  that  if  the  antelope  is  really  saved 
anywhere  in  the  United  States  outside  of  national  parks  and  preserves, 
it  will  be  in  the  wild  and  remote  regions  of  Nevada,  where  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  lumpy-jaw  has  not  yet  taken  hold  of  the  herds. 

New  Hampshire: 

Speaking  generally,  the  New  Hampshire  laws  regulating  the  killing 
and  shipment  of  game  are  defective  for  the  reason  that  on  birds,  and  in 
fact  all  game  save  deer,  there  appear  to  be  no  "bag"  limits  on  the 
quantity  that  may  be  killed  in  a  day  or  a  season.  The  following  bag 
limits  are  greatly  needed,  forthwith: 

Gray  Squirrel,  none  per  day,  or  per  year;  duck  (except  wood-duckj,  ten  per  day, 
or  thirty  per  season;  ruffed  grouse,  four  per  day,  twelve  per  season;  hare  and  rabbit, 
four  per  day,  or  twelve  per  season. 

Five-year  close  seasons  should  immediately  be  enacted  for  the  following  species: 
quail,  woodcock,  jacksnipe  and  all  species  of  shore  or  "beach"  birds. 

The  sale  of  all  native  wild  game  should  be  prohibited;  and  game-breeding  in  pre- 
serves, and  the  sale  of  such  game  under  state  supervision,  should  be  provided  for. 

The  use  of  automatic  and  pump  guns  in  hunting  should  be  barred, — through  state 
pride,  if  for  no  other  reason. 

New  Jersey: 

New  Jersey  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being  the  second  state  to  break 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED   IN   THE   STATES  289 

the  strangle-hold  of  the  gun-makers  of  Hartford  and  IHon,  and  cast  out 
the  odious  automatic  and  pump  guns.  It  was  a  pitched  battle, — that  of 
1912,  inaugurated  by  Ernest  Napier,  President  of  the  State  Game  and 
Fish  Commission  and  his  fellow  commissioners.  The  longer  the  contest 
continued,  the  more  did  the  press  and  the  people  of  New  Jersey  awaken 
to  the  seriousness  of  the  situation.  Finally,  the  gun-suppression  bill 
passed  the  two  houses  of  the  legislature  with  a  total  of  only  fourteen  votes 
against  it,  and  after  a  full  hearing  had  been  granted  the  attorneys  of  the 
gunmakers,  was  promptly  signed  by  Governor  Woodrow  Wilson.  Gov- 
ernor Wilsott  could  not  be  convinced  that  the  act  ivas  "unconstitutional,'"  or 
"confiscatory"  or  "class  legislation." 

This  contest  aroused  the  whole  state  to  the  imperative  necessity  of 
providing  more  thorough  protection  for  the  remnant  of  New  Jersey  game, 
and  it  was  chiefly  responsible  for  the  enactment  of  four  other  excellent 
new  protective  laws. 

New  Jersey  always  has  been  sincere  in  her  desire  to  protect  her  wild 
life,  and  always  has  gone  as  far  as  the  killers  of  game  would  permit  her  to  go! 
But  the  People  have  made  one  great  mistake, — common  to  nearly  every 
state, — of  permitting  the  game-killers  to  dictate  the  game  laws!  Always 
and  everywhere,  this  is  a  grievous  mistake,  and  fatal  to  the  game.  For 
example :  In  1866  New  Jersey  enacted  a  five-year  close-season  law  on  the 
"prairie  fowl"  (pinnated  grouse);  but  it  was  too  late  to  save  it.  Now 
that  species  is  as  dead  to  New  Jersey  as  is  the  mastodon.  The  moral  is: 
Will  the  People  apply  this  lesson  to  the  ruffed  grouse,  quail  and  the  shore 
birds  generally  before  they,  too,  are  too  far  gone  to  be  brought  back? 
If  it  is  done,  it  must  be  done  against  the  will  of  the  gunners;  for  they  prefer 
to  shoot, — and  shoot  they  will  if  they  can  dictate  the  laws,  until  the  last 
game  bird  is  dead. 

In  1912,  New  Jersey  is  spending  $30,000  in  trying  to  restock  her 
birdless  covers  with  foreign  game  birds  and  quail.  In  brief,  here  are  the 
imperative  duties  of  New  Jersey : 

Provide  eight-3^ear  close  seasons  for  quail,  ruffed  grouse,  woodcock,  snipe,  all  shore 
birds  and  the  wood-duck. 

Prohibit  the  sale  of  all  native  wild  game ;  but  promote  the  sale  of  preserve-bred  game. 
Prevent  the  repeal  of  the  automatic  gun  law,  which  surelj^  will  be  attempted,  each 
year. 

Prohibit  all  bird-shooting  after  January  10,  each  year,  until  fall. 
Prohibit  the  killing  of  squirrels  as  "game." 

New  Mexico: 

All  things  considered,  the  game  laws  of  New  Mexico  are  surprisingly 
up  to  date,  and  the  state  is  to  be  congratulated  on  its  advanced  position. 
For  example,  there  arc  long  close  seasons  on  antelope,  elk  (now  extinct!), 
mountain  sheep,  bob  white  quail,  pinnated  grouse,  wild  pigeon  and 
ptarmigan, — an  admirable  list,  truly.  It  is  clear  that  New  Mexico  is 
wide  awake  to  the  dangers  of  the  wild-life  situation.  On  two  counts,  her 
laws  are  not  quite  perfect.    There  is  no  law  prohibiting  spring  shooting, 


290  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

and  there  is  no  "model  law"  protecting  the  non-game  birds.  The  sale 
of  game  will  not  trouble  New  Mexico,  because  the  present  laws  prevent 
the  sale  of  all  protected  game  except  plover,  curlew  and  snipe, — all  of  them 
•  species  by  no  means  common  in  the  arid  regions  of  the  Southwest. 

A  law  prohibiting  spring  shooting  of  shore  birds  and  waterfowl  should  be  passed  at 
the  next  session  of  the  legislature. 

The  enactment  of  the  "model  law"  should  be  accomplished  without  delay  to  put 
New  Mexico  abreast  of  the  neighboring  states  of  Colorado,  Oklahoma  and  Texas. 

The  term  of  the  State  Warden  should  be  extended  to  four  years. 

New  York: 

In  the  year  of  grace,  1912,  I  think  we  may  justly  regard  New  York 
as  the  banner  state  of  all  America  in  the  protection  of  game  and  wild  life 
in  general.  This  proud  position  has  been  achieved  partly  through  the 
influence  of  a  great  conservation  Governor,  John  A.  Dix,  and  the 
State  Conservation  Commission  proposed  and  created  b}^  his  efforts.  In 
these  days  of  game  destruction,  when  our  country  from  Nome  to  Key 
West  is  reeking  with  the  blood  of  slaughtered  wild  creatures,  it  is  a 
privilege  and  a  pleasure  to  be  a  citizen  of  a  state  which  has  thoroughly 
cleaned  house,  and  done  well  nigh  the  utmost  that  any  state  can  do  to 
clear  her  bad  record,  and  give  all  her  wild  creatures  a  fair  chance  to 
survive.  The  people  of  the  Empire  State  literally  can  point  with  pride 
to  the  list  of  things  accomplished  in  the  discharge  of  good-citizenship 
toward  the  remnant  of  wild  life,  and  toward  the  future  generations  of 
New  Yorkers.  That  we  of  to-day  have  borne  our  share  of  the  burden  of 
bringing  about  the  conditions  of  1912,  will  be  a  source  of  satisfaction, 
especially  when  the  sword  and  shield  hang  useless  upon  the  walls  of 
Old  Age. 

New  York  began  to  protect  her  deer  in  1705  and  her  heath  hens  in 
1708.  In  1912  she  stopped  the  killing  of  female  deer,  and  of  bucks  having 
horns  less  than  three  inches  in  length.  Spring  shooting  was  stopped  in 
1903.  A  comprehensive  law  protecting  non-game  birds  was  enacted  in 
1862.  New  York's  first  law  against  the  sale  of  certain  game  during  close 
seasons  was  enacted  in  1837. 

In  1911  New  York  enacted,  with  only  one  adverse  vote,  a  law  pro- 
hibiting the  sale  of  all  native  wild  game  throughout  the  state,  no  matter 
where  killed,  and  providing  liberally  for  the  encouragement  of  game- 
breeding,  and  the  sale  of  preserve-bred  game. 

In  1912  a  new  codification  of  the  state  game  laws  went  into  effect, 
through  the  initiative  of  Governor  Dix  and  Conservation  Commissioners 
Van  Kennen,  Moore  and  Fleming,  assisted  (as  special  counsel)  by  Mar- 
shall McLean,  George  A.  Lawyer  and  John  B.  Burnham.  This  code 
contains  many  important  new  provisions,  one  of  the  most  valuable  of 
which  is  a  clause  giving  the  Conservation  Commission  power,  at  its  dis- 
cretion, to  shorten  or  to  close  any  open  season  on  any  species  of  game  in 
any  locality  wherein  that  species  seems  to  be  threatened  with  extermina- 
tion.   This  very  valuable  principle  should  be  enacted  into  law  in  every  state ! 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED    IN    THE    STATES  291 

In  1910,  William  Dutcher  and  T.  Gilbert  Pearson  and  the  National 
Association  of  Audubon  Societies  won,  after  a  struggle  lasting  five  years, 
the  passage  of  the  "Shea  plumage  bill,"  prohibiting  the  sale  of  aigrettes 
or  other  plumage  of  wild  birds  belonging  to  the  same  families  as  the  birds 
of  New  York  (Chap.  256).    This  law  should  be  duplicated  in  every  state. 

Two  things  remain  to  be  done  in  the  state  of  New  York. 

All  the  shore  birds,  quail  and  gray  squirrels  of  the  state  should  be  given  five-year 
cIo.se  seasons,  by  the  action  of  the  State  Conservation  Commission. 

For  the  good  name  of  the  state,  and  the  ethical  standing  of  its  sportsmen,  as  an 
example  to  other  states,  and  the  last  remaining  duty  toward  our  wild  life,  the  odioua 
automatic  and  pump  shotguns  should  be  barred  from  use  in  hunting,  unless  their 
capacity  is  reduced  to  two  shots  without  reloading. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

NEW  LAWS  NEEDED  IN  THE  STATES 

(Concluded) 

North  Carolina: 

The  game  laws  of  North  Carolina  form  a  droll  crazy-quilt  of  local  and 
state  measures,  effective  and  ineffective.  In  1909,  a  total  of  77  local 
game  laws  were  enacted,  and  only  tvv'o  of  state-wide  application.  During 
the  ten  years  ending  in  1910,  a  total  of  316  game  laws  were  enacted!  She 
sedulously  endeavors  to  protect  her  quail,  which  do  not  migrate,  but  in 
Currituck  County  she  persistently  maintains  the  bloodiest  slaughter- 
pen  for  waterfowl  that  exists  anywhere  on  the  Atlantic  Coast.  There  is 
no  bag  limit  on  waterfowl,  and  unlimited  spring  shooting.  So  far  as 
waterfowl  are  concerned,  conditions  could  hardly  be  worse,  except  by  the 
use  of  punt  guns.  Doves,  larks  and  robins  are  shot  and  eaten  as  "game" 
from  November  1  to  March  1 !  Twenty-one  counties  have  local  re- 
strictions on  the  sale  of  game,  but  the  state  at  large  has  only  one, — on 
quail. 

The  market  gunners  of  Currituck  Sound  are  a  scourge  and  a  pest  to 
the  wild-fowl  life  of  the  Atlantic  Coast.  For  their  own  money  profit, 
they  slaughter  by  wholesale  the  birds  that  annually  fly  through  twenty- 
two  states.  It  is  quite  useless  to  suggest  anything  to  North  Carolina  in 
modern  game  laws.  As  long  as  a  killable  bird  remains,  she  will  not  stop 
the  slaughter.  Her  standing  reply  is  "It  brings  a  lot  of  money  into 
Currituck  County ;  and  the  people  want  the  money . "  Even  the  members 
of  the  sportsmen's  clubs  can  shoot  wild  fowl  in  Currituck  County,  quite 
without  limit;  and  I  am  told  that  the  privilege  often  is  abused.  Quite 
recently  I  heard  of  a  member  of  one  of  the  clubs  who  shot  164  ducks  and 
geese  in  two  days ! 

Apparently  any  suggestions  made  to  North  Carolina  would  not  be 
treated  seriously,  especially  if  they  would  tend  really  to  elevate  the  sport 
of  game  shooting,  or  better  protect  the  game.  There  is,  however,  a 
melancholy  interest  attached  to  the  framing  of  good  game  laws,  whether 
they  ever  are  likely  to  be  adopted  or  not.  Here  is  the  duty  of  North 
Carolina : 

Stop  the  killing  of  robins,  doves  and  larks  for  food,  absolutely  and  forever.     This 
measure  is  necessary  to  agriculture  and  to  the  good  name  of  the  state. 

Stop  the  shooting  of  any  game  for  sale,  prohibit  the  possession  of  game  for  sale,  and 
the  sale  of  wild  native  game. 

Establish  bag  limits  on  all  waterfowl,  and  on  all  other  game  birds  and  mammals. 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED    IN    THE   STATES  293 

Prepare  to  protect,  at  an  early  date,  the  wild  turkey  and  quail ;  for  soon  they  will 
need  it.  Moreover,  enact  a  law  prohibiting  the  use  of  automatic  and  pump  guns  in 
hunting,  covering  the  entire  state. 

Provide  a  resident-license  system  and  thereby  make  the  game  department  self- 
sustaining,  and  render  it  possible  to  employ  a  salaried  State  Game  Commissioner. 

It  is  quite  wrong  for  the  people  of  North  CaroHna  to  hold  grudges 
against  northern  members  of  the  ducking  clubs  of  Currituck  for  the 
passage  of  the  Bayne  law.  They  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  it , 
and  I  can  say  this  because  I  was  in  a  position  which  enabled  me  to  know. 

North  Dakota: 

In  1911,  this  sovereign  state  enacted  a  law  prohibiting  the  use  of  auto- 
mobiles in  hunting  wild-fowl;  also  rifles.  North  Dakota  was  the  first 
state  to  recognize  officially  the  fact  that  the  use  of  automobiles  in  hunt- 
ing is  a  serious  m.enace  to  some  forms  of  wild  life.  Beyond  all  question, 
the  machines  do  indeed  bring  an  extra  number  of  birds  within  reach  of 
the  gun !  They  increase  the  annual  slaughter ;  and  it  is  right  and  neces- 
sary to  prohibit  by  law  their  use  in  hunting  game  of  any  kind. 

In  Putman  County,  New  York,  I  have  seen  them  in  action.  A  load 
of  three  or  four  gunners  is  whirled  up  to  a  likely  mountain-side  for  ruffed 
grouse,  and  presently  the  banging  begins.  After  an  hour  or  so  spent  in 
combing  out  the  birds,  the  hunters  jump  in,  whirl  away  in  a  dust-cloud 
to  another  spot  two  miles  away,  and  "bang-bang-bang"  again.  After 
that,  a  third  locality;  and  so  on,  covering  six  or  eight  times  the  territory 
that  a  man  in  a  buggy,  or  on  foot,  could  possibly  shoot  over  in  the  same 
time! 

North  Dakota  has  done  well,  in  the  passage  of  that  act.  On  certain 
other  matters,  she  is  not  so  sound. 

For  instance : 

The  killing  of  pinnated  grouse  should  be  stopped  for  ten  years;  and  it  should  be 
done  immediately. 

The  killing  of  cranes  as  "game  "  should  stop,  instantly  and  forever.    It  is  barbarous. 

Fifty  dead  birds  in  possession  at  one  time  is  fully  thirty  too  many.  The  game 
cannot  stand  such  slaughter ! 

All  shore  birds  (Order  Limicolae)  should  have  at  least  a  five-year  close  season, 
before  they  are  exterminated. 

The  use  of  machine  guns  in  hunting  should  be  stopped,  forever. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  state  that  antelope  are  absolutely  protected 
until  1920,  and  an  unlimited  close  season  has  been  accorded  the  quail, 
dove  and  swan. 

Ohio: 

I  think  that  Ohio  comes  the  nearest  of  all  the  states  to  being  gameless. 
With  but  slight  exceptions  her  laws  are  about  as  correct  as  those  of  most 
other  states,  but  the  desire  to  "kill "  is  so  strong,  and  the  majority  of  her 
gunners  are  so  thoroughly  selfish  about  their  "rights"  that  the  game  has 


294  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

ruthlessly  been  swept  away  according  to  law!  Ohio  is  a  striking  example 
of  the  deplorable  results  of  legalized  slaughter.  The  spirit  of  Ohio  is  like 
that  of  North  Carolina.  Her  "sportsmen"  will  not  have  an  automatic 
gun  law!  Oh,  no!  "Limit  the  bag,  shorten  the  season,  and  the  gun 
won't  matter!" 

To-day,  the  visible  game  supply  of  Ohio  does  not  amount  to  any- 
thing ;  and  when  the  last  game  bird  of  that  state  falls  before  the  greediest 
shooter,  we  shall  say,  "A  gameless  state  is  just  what  you  deserve!" 

It  is  useless  to  make  any  suggestions  to  Ohio.  Her  shooting  Shylocks 
want  the  last  pound  of  flesh  from  wild  life,  and  I  think  they  will  get  it 
very  soon.  Ohio  is  in  the  area  of  barren  states.  The  seed  stock  has  been 
too  thoroughly  destroyed  to  be  recuperated.  I  think  that  Ohio's  last 
noteworthy  exploit  in  lawmaking  for  the  preservation  ( !)  of  her  game  was 
in  1904,  when  she  put  all  her  shore  birds  into  the  list  of  killable  game, 
and  bravely  prohibited  the  shooting  of  doves  on  the  ground!  Great  is 
Ohio  in  game  conservation! 

Oklahoma: 

For  a  state  so  young,  the  wild-life  laws  of  Oklahoma  are  in  admirable 
shape;  but  it  is  reasonably  certain  that  there,  as  elsewhere,  the  game  is 
being  killed  much  faster  than  it  is  breeding.  The  new  commonwealth 
must  arouse,  and  screw  up  the  brakes  much  tighter. 

Recently,  an  observing  friend  told  me  that  on  a  trip  of  250  miles 
westward  from  Lawton  and  back  again,  watching  sharply  for  game  all 
the  way,  he  saw  only  five  pinnated  grouse !  And  this  in  a  good  season 
for  "prairie  chickens." 

Oklahoma  must  stop  all  spring  shooting. 

The  prairie  chicken  must  have  a  ten-year  close  season,  immediately. 

Next  time,  her  legislature  will  pass  the  automatic  gun  bill  that  failed  last  year  only 
because  the  session  closed  too  soon  for  its  consideration. 

Oklahoma  is  wise  in  giving  long  protection  to  her  quail,  and  "wild 
pigeon,  "  and  such  protection  should  be  made  equally  effective  in  the  case 
of  the  dove.  She  is  wise  in  rigidly  enforcing  her  law  against  the  exporta- 
tion of  game. 

The  Wichita  National  Bison  herd,  near  Cache,  now  contains  forty 
head  of  bison,  all  in  good  condition.  The  nucleus  herd  consisted  of 
fifteen  head  presented  by  the  New  York  Zoological  Society  in  1907. 

Oregon: 

The  results  of  the  efforts  that  have  been  made  by  Oregon  to  provide 
special  laws  for  each  individual  shooter  are  painful  to  contemplate.  Like 
North  Carolina,  Oregon  has  attempted  the  impossible  task  of  pleasing 
everybody,  and  at  the  same  time  protecting  her  wild  life.  The  two 
propositions  can  be  blended  together  about  as  easily  as  asphalt  and  water. 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED    IN    THE   STATES  295 

The  individual  shooter  desires  laws  that  will  permit  him  to  shoot — when 
he  pleases,  where  he  pleases,  and  what  he  pleases!  If  you  meet  those 
conditions  all  over  a  great  state,  then  it  is  time  to  bid  farewell  to  the 
game;   for  it  surely  is  doomed. 

No,  decidely  no !  Do  not  attempt  to  pass  game  laws  that  will  "  jjlease 
everybody."  The  more  the  game-hogs  are  displeased,  the  better  for  the 
game !  The  game-hogs  form  a  very  small  and  very  insignificant  minority 
of  the  whole  People.  Why  please  one  man  at  the  expense  of  ninty-nine 
others?  The  game  of  a  state  belongs  to  The  People  as  a  whole,  not  to 
the  gunners  alone.  The  great,  patient, — and  sometimes  sleepy, — 
majority  has  vested  rights  in  it,  and  it  is  for  it  to  say  how  it  shall  and 
shall  not  be  killed.  Heretofore  the  gunning  minority  has  been  dictating 
the  game  laws  of  America,  and  the  result  is — progressive  extermination. 

First  of  all,  Oregon  should  bury  the  pernicious  idea  of  individual  and  local  laws. 

She  should  enact  a  concise,  clearly  cut,  and  thoroughly  effective  code  of  wild  life 
laws,  just  as  New  York  did  last  winter. 

Her  game  seasons  should  be  uniform  in  application,  all  over  the  state. 

Every  species  of  bird,  mammal  or  fish  that  is  threatened  with  extermination  should 
be  given  a  close  season  of  f  roin  five  to  ten  years. 

It  is  now  time  to  protect  the  white  goose  and  brant.  Squirrels,  band-tailed  pigeons 
and  doves  should  be  perpetually  protected. 

The  State  Game  Commission  should  have  power  to  close  the  shooting  seasons  on 
any  species  of  game  in  any  locality,  whenever  a  species  is  threatened  with  extinction. 

The  sale  of  native  wild  game,  from  all  sources,  should  be  permanently  stopped,  by 
a  Bayne  law. 

The  use  of  automatic,  "autoloading"  and  pump  shot  guns  in  hunting  should  be 
perpetually  barred. 

Pennsylvania: 

As  a  game  protecting  state,  Pennsylvania  is  a  close  second  to  New  York 
and  Massachusetts.  She  protects  all  native  game  from  sale;  she  has  the 
courage  to  prohibit  aliens  from  owning  guns;  she  bars  out  automatic  shot- 
guns in  hunting;  she  makes  refuges  for  deer,  and  feeds  her  quail  in  winter, 
and  she  permits  the  killing  of  no  female  deer,  or  fawns  with  horns  less 
than  three  inches  in  length.  Her  splendid  State  Game  Commission  is 
fighting  hard  for  a  hunter's  license  law,  and  will  win  the  fight  for  it  at  the 
next  session  of  the  legislature  (1913). 

But  there  are  certain  things  that  Pennsylvania  should  do: 

She  should  stop  all  spring  shooting.  She  must  stop  killing  doves,  blackbirds,  wild 
turkeys,  sandpipers,  and  all  the  squirrels  save  the  red  squirrel. 

She  should  give  all  her  shore  birds  a  rest  of  at  least  five  years,  for  recuperation. 

She  should  enact  a  comprehensive  Dutcher  plumage  law,  stopping  the  sale  of 
aigrettes. 

vShe  should  provide  a  resident  license  to  furnish  her  Game  Commission  willi  ade- 
quate funds  to  carry  on  its  work  and  exterminate  game-killing  vermin. 

Rhode  Island: 

Little  Rhody  needs  some  good,  small  bag  limits;  for  now  (1912)  she  has  none! 


29%  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

She  should  enact  a  Bayne  law,  aPennsylvania  law  against  aliens,  and  a  New  Jersey 
law  against  the  automatic  and  pump  guns. 

She  should  stop  killing  the  beautiful  wood-duck,  and  gray  squirrel. 
She  should  stop  all  spring  shooting  of  waterfowl. 

vSouTH  Carolina; 

She  should  save  her  game  while  she  still  has  some  to  save. 

First  of  all,  stop  spring  shooting;   secondly,  enact  a  Bayne  law. 

In  the  name  of  mystery,  who  is  there  in  South  Carolina  who  desires  to  kill 
grackles?    And  why? 

And  where  is  the  gentleman  sportsman  who  has  come  down  to  killing  foolish  and 
tame  little  doves  for  "sport?"     Stop  it  at  once,  for  the  credit  of  the  state. 

Enact  a  dollar  resident  license  law  and  thus  provide  adequate  funds  for  game  pro- 
tection. 

South  Carolina  bag  limits  are  all  50  per  cent  too  high ;  and  they  should  be  reduced. 

It  is  strange  to  see  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  states  lagging  in  game 
protection,  far  behind  such  new  states  as  New  Mexico  and  Oklahoma; 
but  South  Carolina  does  lag.  It  is  time  for  her  to  consider  her  position, 
and  reform. 

South  Dakota: 

South  Dakota  should  stop  all  spring  shooting. 

Her  game-bag  limits  are  really  no  limits  at  all!  They  should  be  reduced  about 
66  per  cent  without  a  moment's  unnecessary  delay. 

The  two  year  term  of  the  State  Warden  is  too  short  for  effective  work.  It  should  be 
extended  to  four  years. 

Unless  South  Dakota  wishes  to  repeat  the  folly  of  such  states  as 
Indiana,  Iowa,  Illinois,  Missouri  and  Ohio,  she  needs  to  be  up  and  doing. 
If  her  people  want  a  gameless  state,  except  for  migratory  waterfowl,  all 
they  need  do  is  to  slumber  on,  and  they  surely  will  have  it.  Why  wait 
until  greedy  sportsmen  have  killed  the  last  game  bird  of  the  state  before 
seriously  taking  the  matter  in  hand?  In  one  act,  all  the  shortcomings 
of  the  present  laws  can  be  corrected. 

South  Dakota  needs  no  Bayne  law,  because  she  prohibits  at  all  times 
the  sale  or  exportation  of  all  wild  game. 

Tennessee: 

In  wild  life  protection,  Tennessee  has  much  to  do.  She  made  her 
start  late  in  life,  and  what  she  needs  to  do  is  to  draft  with  care  and 
enact  with  cheerful  alacrity  certain  necessary  amendments. 

We  notice  that  there  are  open  seasons  for  blackbirds,  robins,  doves  and 
squirrels!    It  seems  incredible;   but  it  is  true. 

Behold  the  blackbird  as  a  "game"  bird,  with  a  lawful  open  season 
from  September  1  to  January  1.  Consider  its  stately  carriage,  its  rapid 
flight  on  the  wing,  its  running  and  hiding  powers  when  attacked.  As  a 
test  of  marksmanship,  as  the  real  thing  for  the  expert  wing  shot,  is  it  not 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED    IN    THE   STATES  297 

great?  Will  not  any  self-respecting  dog  be  proud  to  point  or  retrieve 
them?     And  what  flesh  for  the  table! 

Fancy  an  able-bodied  sportsman  going  out  in  a  fifty-dollar  hunting 
suit,  carrying  a  fifteen-dollar  gun  behind  a  seven-dollar  dog,  and  return- 
ing with  a  glorious  bag  of  twenty-five  blackbirds !  Or  robins !  Or  doves ! 
Proud  indeed,  would  we  be  to  belong  (which  we  don't)  to  a  club  of  ' '  sports- 
men "  who  go  out  shooting  blackbirds,  and  robins,  and  foolish  little  doves, 
as  "game!"  "Game"  indeed,  are  those  birds, — for  little  lads  of  seven 
who  do  not  know  better;  but  not  for  boys  of  twelve  who  have  in  their 
veins  any  inheritance  of  sporting  blood.  (I  am  proud  of  the  fact  that 
at  twelve  years  of  age, — and  ever  so  keen  to  "  go  hunting," — I  knew  with- 
out being  told  that  squirrels  and  doves  were  not  real  "game"  for  real 
boys.) 

The  killers  of  doves,  squirrels,  blackbirds  and  robins  belong  in  the 
same  class  as  the  sparrow-and-linnet-killing  Italians  of  Venice,  Milan 
and  Turin,  and  in  that  company  we  will  leave  them. 

Tennessee  needs: 

A  resident  license  system  to  provide  funds  for  game  protection. 
A  salaried  warden  force. 

A  law  prohibiting  spring  shooting  of  shore  birds  and  waterfowl. 
A  law  protecting   robins,  doves  and    other   non-game   birds  not    covered  by  the 
present  statute. 

Texas: 

I  remember  well  when  the  great  battle  was  fought  in  Texas  by  the 
gallant  men  and  women  of  the  State  Audubon  Society,  to  compel  the 
people  of  Texas  to  learn  the  economic  value  to  agriculture  and  cotton  of 
the  insectivorous  birds.  The  name  of  the  splendid  Brigadier-General 
who  led  the  Army  of  the  Defense  was  Capt.  M.  B.  Davis.  That  was  in 
1903. 

Since  that  great  fight  was  won,  Texas  has  been  a  partly  reformed 
state,  at  times  quite  jealous  of  her  bird  life;  but  still  she  tolerates  spring 
shooting  and  has  not  made  adequate  close  seasons  for  her  waterfowl; 
which  is  wrong.  To-day,  the  people  of  Texas  do  not  need  to  be  told  that 
forty-three  species  of  birds  feed  on  the  cotton  boll  weevil ;  for  they  know  it. 

On  the  whole,  and  for  a  southern  state,  the  wild-life  laws  of  Texas 
are  in  fairly  good  shape.  On  account  of  the  absence  of  game-scourge 
markets,  a  Bayne  law  is  not  so  imperatively  necessary  there  as  in  certain 
other  states.    All  the  game  of  the  state  is  protected  from  sale. 

We  do  assert,  however,  that  if  robins  are  slaughtered  as  F.  L.  Crow, 
the  former  Atlantan  asserts,  all  robin  shooting  should  be  forever  stopped; 
that  the  pinnated  grouse  should  be  given  a  seven-year  close  season,  and 
that  doves  should  be  taken  off  the  list  of  game  birds  and  perpetually  pro- 
tected, both  for  economic  and  sentimental  reasons,  and  also  because  the 
too  weak  and  confiding  dove  is  not  a  "game"  bird  for  red-blooded  men. 

Texas  should  enact  without  delay  a  law  providing  close  seasons  for  ducks,  geese  and 
other  waterfowl; 

A  law  prohibiting  spring  shooting,  and 

A  provision  reducing  the  limit  on  deer  to  two  bucks  a  season. 


298  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Utah; 

The  laws  of  Utah  are  far  from  being  up  to  the  requirements  of  the 
present  hour.    One  strange  thing  has  happened  in  Utah. 

When  I  spent  a  week  in  Salt  Lake  City  in  1888,  and  devoted  some  time 
to  inquiring  into  game  conditions,  the  laws  of  the  state  were  very  bad. 
At  the  mouth  of  Bear  River,  ducks  were  being  slaughtered  for  the  markets 
by  the  tens  of  thousands.  The  cold-blooded,  wide  open  and  utterly 
shameless  way  in  which  it  was  being  done,  right  at  the  doors  of  Salt  Lake 
City,  was  appalling. 

At  the  same  time,  the  law  permitted  the  slaughter  of  spotted  fawns. 
I  saw  a  huge  drygoods  box  filled  to  the  top  with  the  flat  skins  of  slaugh- 
tered innocents,  260  in  number,  that  a  rascal  had  collected  and  was  offering 
at  fifty  cents  each.  In  reply  to  a  question  as  to  their  use,  he  said:  "I 
tink  de  sportsmen  like  'em  for  to  make  vests  oud  of."  He  lived  at 
Rawlins,  Wyo. 

After  a  long  and  somnolent  period,  during  which  hundreds  of  thous- 
ands of  ducks,  geese,  brant  and  other  birds  had  been  slaughtered  for 
market  at  the  Bear  River  shambles  and  elsewhere,  the  state  awoke  suffi- 
ciently to  abate  a  portion  of  the  disgrace  by  passing  a  bag-limit  law 
<1897). 

And  then  came  Nature's  punishment  upon  Utah  for  that  duck 
slaughter.  The  ducks  of  Great  Salt  Lake  became  afflicted  with  a  terrible 
epidemic  disease  (intestinal  coccidiosis)  which  swept  off  thousands,  and 
stopped  the  use  of  Utah  ducks  as  food!  It  was  a  '  'duck  plague,"  no  less. 
It  has  prevailed  for  three  years,  and  has  not  yet  by  any  means  been 
stamped  out.  It  seems  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  countless  thousands 
of  ducks  have  been  feeding  on  the  exposed  alluvial  flats  at  the  mouth 
of  the  creek  that  drains  off  the  sewage  of  Salt  Lake  City.  The  condi- 
tions are  said  to  be  terrible. 

To-day,  Utah  is  so  nearly  destitute  of  big  game  that  the  subject  is 
hardly  worthy  of  mention.  Of  her  upland  game  birds,  only  a  fraction 
remains,  and  as  her  laws  stand  to-day,  she  is  destined  to  beconie  in  the 
near  future  a  gameless  state.  In  a  dry  region  like  this,  the  wild  life  always 
hangs  on  by  a  slender  thread,  and  it  is  easy  to  exterminate  it ! 

Utah  should  instantly  stop  the  sale  of  game  that  she  now  legally  provides  for, — 
twenty-five  shore  birds  and  waterfowl  per  day  to  private  parties ! 

Deer  should  be  given  a  ten-year  close  season,  at  once.  All  bag  limits  should  in- 
stantly be  reduced  one-half.  The  sage  grouse,  quail,  swans,  woodcock,  dove,  and  all 
shore  birds  should  be  given  a  ten-year  close  season, — and  rigidly  protected, — before 
the  stock  is  all  gone. 

The  model  law  for  the  protection  of  non-game  birds  should  be  enacted  at  once. 

The  absolute  protection  of  elk,  antelope  and  sheep  (until  1913)  should  be  extended 
for  twenty  years. 

Utah  should  create  a  big-game  preserve,  at  once. 

If  Utah  proposes  to  save  even  a  remnant  of  her  wild  life  for  posterity, 
she  must  be  up  and  doing. 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED   IN    THE   STATES  29&' 

Vermont : 

In  view  of  all  conditions,  it  must  be  stated  that  the  game  laws  of 
Vermont  are,  with  but  slight  exceptions,  in  good  condition.  It  is  a 
pleasure  to  see  that  there  is  no  spring  shooting;  that  there  is  no  "open" 
season  of  slaughter  for  the  moose,  caribou,  wood-duck,  swan,  upland 
plover,  dove  or  rail ;  that  no  buck  deer  with  antlers  less  than  three  inches 
long  inay  be  killed ;  and  that  there  is  a  law  under  which  damages  by  deer 
to  growing  crops  inay  be  assessed  and  paid  for  by  the  county  in  which 
they  occur.  Moreover,  if  there  is  to  be  any  killing  of  game,  her  bag 
limits  are  not  extravagant.  All  the  game  protected  by  the  state  is  im- 
mune from  sale  for  food  purposes,  but  preserve-reared  game  inay  legally 
be  sold.     We  recommend  the  following  new  measures: 

Absolute  close  seasons  of  five-years'  duration  for  ruffed  grouse,  quail,  woodcock, 
snipe  and  all  shore  birds  without  a  single  exception. 

The  gray  squirrel  should  be  perpetually  protected, — because  he  is  too  beautiful, 
too  companionable  and  too  unfit  for  food  to  be  killefl.  Even  the  hungry  savages  of 
the  East  Indies  do  not  eat  squirrels. 

Pass  an  automatic  pump-gun  law. 

Extend  the  term  of  the  Fish  and  Game  Commissioner  to  four  years. 

Vermont's  great  success  in  introducing  and  colonizing  deer  is  both 
interesting  and  valuable.  Fifty  years  ago,  she  had  no  wild  deer,  because 
the  species  had  been  practically  exterminated.  In  1875,  thirteen  deer 
were  imported  from  the  Adirondacks  and  set  free  in  the  mountains.  The 
increase  has  been  enormous.  In  1909  the  number  of  deer  killed  for  the 
year  was  about  5,311,  which  was  possible  without  adversely  affecting  the 
herds.  It  is  a  striking  object-lesson  in  restoring  the  white-tailed  deer  to- 
its  own,  and  it  will  be  found  more  fully  described  in  chapter  XXIV. 

Virginia: 

Virginia  is  far  below  the  position  that  she  should  occupy  in  wild-life 
conservation.  To  set  her  house  in  order,  and  come  up  to  the  level  of  the 
states  that  have  been  born  during  the  past  twenty  years,  she  must  bestir 
herself  in  these  ways : 

She  must  provide  for  a  resident  hunting  license,  a  State  Game  Commissioner  and 
a  force  of  salaried  wardens. 

She  must  prohibit  spring  shooting. 

She  must  impose  small  bag  limits  on  game-slaughter. 

She  must  resolutely  stop  the  sale  of  all  wild  game. 

She  must  stop  the  killing  of  female  deer,  and  of  bucks  with  horns  under  three 
inches  long. 

She  must  stop  killing  gray  squirrels  and  doves  as  "game." 

She  .should  not  permit  the  beautiful  wood-duck  to  be  killed  as  "game." 

She  should  accord  a  five-year  close  season  to  grouse,  and  all  shore  birds. 

She  should  rule  out  the  machine  shot-guns  which  gentlemen  can  no  longer  use  in 
hunting. 

She  should  adopt  at  once  a  comprehensive  code  of  game  laws,  and 


300  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

clean  her  house  in  one  siege,  instead  of  fiddling  and  fussing  with  all  these 
matters  one  by  one,  through  a  series  of  ten  long,  weary  years.  The  time 
for  puttering  with  game  protection  has  gone  by.  It  is  now  time  to  make 
short  cuts  to  comprehensive  results,  and  save  the  game  before  it  is  too  late. 

Washington: 

The  state  of  Washington  still  flatters  herself  that  she  has  all  kinds  of 
big  game  to  kill, — moose,  antelope,  goat,  sheep,  caribou  and  deer.  Evi- 
dently this  is  on  the  theory  that  so  long  as  a  species  is  not  extinct,  it  is 
"legal "  and  right  to  pursue  it  with  rifles  during  a  specified  "open  season." 

The  people  of  Washington  need  to  be  told  that  conditions  have  greatly 
changed,  and  it  is  now  high  time  to  put  on  the  brakes.  It  is  time  for  them 
to  realize  that  if  they  wait  any  longer  for  the  sportsmen  to  take  the 
initiative  in  securing  the  enactment  of  really  adequate  preservation  lav/s, 
all  their  big  game  will  be  dead  before  those  laws  are  born!  Every  man 
shrinks  from  cutting  off  his  own  pet  privilege. 

Some  of  the  game  laws  of  Washington  are  up  to  date;  and  her  big- 
game  laws  look  all  right  to  the  unaided  eye,  but  are  not.  Her  bird  laws 
are  a  chaotic  jumble  of  local  exceptions  and  special  privileges.  As  a  net 
result  of  all  her  shortcomings,  the  remnant  of  a  once  fine  fauna  of  big 
game  and  feathered  game  is  surely  being  exterminated  according  to  law. 
A  few  local  exceptions  will  not  disprove  the  general  truthfulness  of  this 
assertion. 

Ten  years  ago  a  few  men  in  Seattle  resented  the  idea  of  outside  co- 
operation in  the  protection  of  Washington  game.  They  said  they  were 
abundantly  able  to  take  care  of  it;  but  the  march  of  events  has  proven 
that  they  overestimated  their  capacity.  To-day  the  wild-life  laws  of 
that  state  are  only  half  baked.  Come  what  may  to  me,  I  shall  set  down 
without  malice  the  things  that  the  great  and  admirable  State  of  Wash- 
ington should  do  to  set  her  house  in  order.  It  is  not  good  for  the 
resourceful  and  progressive  men  of  the  Great  Northwest  to  be  clear 
behind  the  times  in  these  matters. 

Stop  local  game  legislation,  and  enact  a  code  of  laws  covering  the  entire 
state,  uniformly.    County  legislation  is  twenty  years  behind  the  times! 

For  ten  (10)  full  years,  stop  the  killing  of  elk,  mountain  sheep,  mountain  goat, 
caribou,  inoose,  and  antelope.     Regarding  deer,  I  am  in  doubt. 

Prohibit  the  sale  of  all  wild  game,  no  matter  where  killed,  by  the  enactment  of  a 
Bayne  law,  complete,  which  will  also 

Promote  the  breeding,  killing  and  sale  of  domestic  game  for  food  purposes. 

Make  a  careful  investigation  of  the  present  status  of  your  sage  grouse,  every  other 
grouse,  quail,  and  all  species  of  shore  birds,  then  give  a  five-year  close  season,  all  over 
the  state,  to  every  species  that  is  "becoming  scarce."  This  will  embrace  certainly 
one-half  of  the  whole  number,  if  not  two-thirds. 

Provide  two  bird  refuges  in  the  eastern  portion  of  the  state,  where  they  are  very 
greatly  needed  to  supplement  the  good  effects  of  the  State  Game  Preserve  estab- 
lished on  Puget  Sound  in  1911. 

Bar  the  use  in  hunting  of  the  odious  automatic  and  pump  shotguns  that  are  now  so 
generally  in  use  all  over  the  United  States  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  game  and  the 
people. 


NEW  LAWS    NEED F. I)    IN    THE    STATES  301 

West  Virginia: 

Considering  the  fact  that  West  Virginia  contains  no  plague-spot  city 
for  the  consumption  of  commercial  wild  game,  that  the  sale  of  all  game 
is  prohibited  at  all  times,  and  the  game  of  the  state  may  not  be  exported 
for  sale  elsewhere,  the  wild  life  of  West  Virginia  is  reasonably  secure  from 
the  market  gunner, — if  an  adequate  salaried  warden  force  is  provided. 
Without  such  a  force  her  game  must  continue  to  be  destroyed  in  the 
future  as  in  the  past  to  supply  the  markets  of  Pittsburgh,  Philadelphia, 
Baltimore  and  Washington.  The  deer  law  is  excellent,  and  the  non-game 
birds,  and  the  dove  and  wood-duck  are  perpetually  protected. 

One  fly  in  the  ointment  is — spring  shooting;  which  for  ducks,  geese 
and  brant  continues  from  September  1  to  April  20.  Unfortunately  the 
law  enacted  in  1875  against  spring  shooting  has  been  repealed,  and  so  has 
the  resident  hunting  license  law  (1911). 

In  view  of  the  impossibility  of  imagining  a  good  reason  for  the  repeal 
of  a  good  law,  we  recommend : 

That  the  law  against  spring  shooting  be  re-enacted. 

That  the  resident  hunter's  license  law  be  re-enacted,  and  tlie  proceeds  specifically 
devoted  to  the  preservation  and  increase  of  game. 

That  a  force  of  regular  salaried  wardens  be  provided  to  enforce  the  laws. 

That  the  bag  limit  on  quail  should  be  10  per  day  or  40  per  season,  instead  of  12  and 
96;  and  on  ruffed  grouse  it  should  be  3  per  day  (as  in  New  York)  or  12  per  season. 
One  wild  turkey  per  day,  or  three  per  season  is  quite  enough  for  one  man.  The 
visible  supply  will  not  justify  the  existing  limit  of  two  and  six. 

Wisconsin: 

In  spite  of  the  fierce  fight  made  in  1910-11  by  the  saloon-element 
game-shooters  of  Milwaukee  for  the  control  of  the  wild-life  situation,  and 
the  repeal  of  the  best  protective  laws  of  the  state,  the  Army  of  Defense 
once  more  defeated  the  Allied  Destroyers,  and  drove  them  off  the  field. 
Once  more  it  was  proven  that  when  The  People  are  aroused,  they  are 
abundantly  able  to  send  the  steam  roller  over  the  enemies  of  wild  life. 

Alphabetically,  Wisconsin  may  come  near  the  end  of  the  roll-call; 
but  by  downright  merit  in  protection,  she  comes  mighty  close  to  the  head 
of  the  list  of  states.  Her  slate  of  "Work  to  be  done"  is  particularly 
clean;  and  she  has  our  most  distinguished  admiration.  Her  force  of 
game  wardens  is  not  a  political-machine  force.  It  amounts  to  some- 
thing. The  men  who  get  within  it  undergo  successfully  a  civil  service 
examination  that  certainly  separates  the  sheep  from  the  goats.  For 
particulars  address  Dr.  T,  S.  Palmer,  Department  of  Agriculture,  Wash- 
ington. 

According  to  the  standards  that  have  been  dragging  along  previous 
to  this  moment,  Wisconsin  has  a  good  series  of  game  laws.  But  the  hour 
for  a  Reformation  of  ideas  and  principles  has  struck.  We  heard  it  first 
in  April,  1911.  The  wild  life  of  America  must  not  be  exterminated 
according  to  law,  contrary  to  law,  or  in  the  absence  of  law !    Wisconsin 


302  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

must  take  a  fresh  grip  on  her  game  situation,  or  it  will  get  away  from  her, 
after  all. 

Not  another  prairie  chicken  or  woodcock  should  be  killed  in  Wisconsin  between 
1912  and  1922.  When  any  small  bird  becomes  so  scarce  that  the  bag  limit  needs  to 
be  cut  down  to  five,  as  it  now  is  for  the  above  in  Wisconsin,  it  is  time  to  stop  for  ten 
years,  before  it  is  too  late. 

Wisconsin  should  immediately  busy  herself  about  the  creation  of  bird  and  game 
preserves. 

For  goodness  sake,  Wisconsin,  stop  killing  squirrels  as  "game!"  You  ought  to 
know  better — and  you  do !    Leave  that  form  of  barbarism  for  the  Benighted  States. 

And  pass  a  law  shutting  out  the  machine  guns.  They  are  a  disgrace  to  our  country, 
and  a  scourge  to  our  game.    Continually  are  they  leading  good  men  astray. 

Extend  the  term  of  your  State  Warden  to  four  years. 

Wyoming: 

The  State  of  Wyoming  once  had  a  magnificent  heritage  of  game. 
It  embraced  the  Rocky  Mountain  species,  and  also  those  of  the  great 
plains.  First  and  last,  the  state  has  worked  hard  to  protect  her  wild  life, 
and  hold  the  killing  of  it  down  to  a  decent  basis. 

As  far  back  as  1889,  I  met  on  the  Shoshone  River  a  very  wide-awake 
warden,  actually  "on  his  job,"  who  was  maintained  by  a  body  of  private 
citizens  headed  by  Col.  Pickett  and  known  as  the  Northern  Wyoming 
Game  Protective  Association.  And  even  then  we  saw  that  the  laws  were 
too  liberal  for  the  game.  In  one  man's  cold-storage  dug-out  we  saw 
enough  sheep,  deer  and  elk  meat  to  subsist  a  company  of  hungry  dra- 
goons, all  killed  and  possessed  according  to  law. 

In  the  protection  of  her  mountain  game,  Wyoming  has  had  a  hard  task. 
In  the  Yellowstone  Park  between  1889  and  1894,  the  poachers  for  the 
taxidermists  of  Livingston  and  elsewhere  slaughtered  270  bison  out  of 
300;  and  Howell  was  the  only  man  caught.  England  can  protect  game 
in  far-distant  mountains  and  wildernesses;  but  America  can  not, — or  at 
least  we  don't!  With  us,  men  living  in  remote  places  who  find  wild  game 
about  them  say  "  To  h —  with  the  law ! "  They  kill  on  the  sly,  in  season 
and  out  of  season,  females  and  males;  and  the  average  local  jury  simply 
will  not  convict  the  average  settler  who  is  accused  of  such  a  trifling  in- 
discretion as  killing  game  out  of  season  when  he  "needs  the  meat." 

And  so,  with  laws  in  full  force  protecting  females,  the  volume  of  big 
game  steadily  disappears,  everywhere  west  of  the  Alleghanies  where  the 
law  permits  big-game  hunting!  An  interesting  chapter  might  be  written 
on  game  exterminated  according  to  law. 

The  deadly  defects  in  the  protection  of  western  big  game  are : 
Structural  weakness  in  the  enforcement  of  the  laws ; 
Collusion  between  offenders  for  the  suppression  of  evidence; 
Perjury  on  the  witness  stand; 

Dishonesty  and  disloyalty  on  the  part  of  local  jurors  when  friends 
are  on  trial; 


NEW  LAWS   NEEDED   IN    THE   STATES 


303 


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From  Farmers'  Bulletin  No.  510,  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Agriculture 

STATES  AND  PROVINCES  WHICH  REQUIRE   RESIDENTS   TO   OBTAIN   HUNTING 

LICENSES,  1912 

In  Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  New  York,  Oklahoma  and  Rhode  Island  an  additional  fee  of  10 
to  20  cents  is  charged  for  issuing  the  license. 

Inclosed  names  indicate  States  which  permit  residents  to  hunt  on  their  own  land  without 
license.     Nova  Scotia  has  a  $o  resident  license  and  exempts  landowners. 

Note  that  many  of  the  States  adopt  the  French  method  of  exempting  landowners,  while  some, 
particularly  in  the  West  follow  the  English  method  of  requiring  everyone  who  hunts  to  obtain  a 
license. 

Sympathy  of  judges  for  "the  poor  man"  who  wants  to  eat  the 
game  to  save  his  cattle  and  sheep. 
Elsewhere  there  appears  a  statement  regarding  the  elk  of  Jackson 
Hole,  and  the  efforts  made  and  being  made  to  save  them.     At  this  point 
we  are  interested  in  the  game  of  Wyoming  as  a  whole. 

First  of  all,  the  killing  of  mountain  sheep  should  absolutely  cease,  for  ten  years. 

A  similar  ten-year  close  season  should  be  accorded  moose  and  prong-horned  antelope. 

All  grouse  should  now  be  classed  with  doves  and  swans  (no  open  season),  and  kept 
there  for  ten  years. 

Spring  shooting  is  wrong  in  principle  and  vicious  in  practice;  and  it  should  be 
stopped  in  Wyoming,  as  elsewhere. 

The  automatic  and  pump  shotguns  when  used  in  hunting  are  a  disgrace  to  Wyoming, 
as  they  are  to  other  states,  and  should  be  suppressed;  and  the  silencer  for  use  in  hunt- 
ing is  in  the  black  list. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

NEED  FOR  A  FEDERAL  MIGRATORY  BIRD  LAW,  NO-SALE- 
OF-GAME  LAW,  AND  OTHERS 

We  are  assuming  that  the  American  people  sincerely  desire  the  ade- 
quate protection  and  increase  of  bird  life,  for  reasons  that  are  both 
sentimental  and  commercial.  Surely  every  good  citizen  dislikes  to  see 
millions  of  dollar's  worth  of  national  wealth  foolishly  wasted,  and  he  dis- 
likes to  pay  any  unnecessary  increased  cost  of  living.  There  must  be 
several  millions  of  Americans  who  feel  that  way,  and  who  are  disposed 
to  demand  a  complete  revolution  in  bird  protection. 

There  are  four  needs  of  wild  bird  life  that  are  fundamental,  and  that 
can  not  be  ignored,  any  more  than  a  builder  can  ignore  the  four  corner- 
stones of  his  building.  Listed  in  the  order  of  their  importance,  they  are 
as  follows : 

1. — The  federal  protection  of  all  migratory  birds. 
2. — The  total  suppression  of  the  sale  of  native  wild  game. 
3. — The  iotal  suppression   of  spring  shooting  and  of  shooting  in  the 
breeding  season,  and 

4. — Long  close  seasons  for  all  species  that  are  about  to  be  ''shot  out.'' 

If  the  gunners  of  America  wish  to  have  a  gameless  continent,  all  they 
need  do  to  secure  it  is  to  oppose  these  principles,  prevent  their  translation 
into  law,  and  maintain  the  status  quo.  If  they  do  this,  then  all  our 
.  best  birds  are  doomed  to  swift  destruction.  Let  no  man  make  a  mistake  on 
that  point.  The  "open  seasons"  and  "bag  limits"  of  the  United  States 
to-day  are  just  as  deadly  as  the  5,000,000  sporting  guns  now  in  use,  and 
the  700,000,000  annual  cartridges.  It  is  only  the  ignorant  or  the  vicious 
who  will  seriously  dispute  this  statement. 

The  Federal  Protection  of  Migratory  Birds. — The  bill  now 
before  Congress  for  the  protection  of  all  migratory  birds  by  the  national 
government  is  the  most  important  measure  ever  placed  before  that  body 
in  behalf  of  wild  life.  A  stranger  to  this  proposition  will  need  to  pause 
for  thought  in  order  to  grasp  its  full  meaning,  and  appreciate  the  mag- 
nitude of  its  influence. 

The  urgent  necessity  for  a  law  of  this  nature  is  due  to  the  utter 
inadequacy  of  the  laws  that  prevail  throughout  some  portions  of  the 
United  States  concerning  the  slaughter  and  preservation  of  birds.  Any 
law  that  is  not  enforced  is  a  poor  law.     There  is  not  one  state  in  the 


NEW  GAME  LAWS    THAT  ARE   NEEDED  305 

Union,  nor  a  single  province  in  Canada,  in  which  the  game  birds,  and 
other  birds  criminally  shot  as  game,  are  not  being  killed  far  faster  than 
they  are  breeding,  and  thereby  being  exterminated. 

Several  states  are  financially  unable  to  employ  a  force  of  salaried 
gaine  wardens;  and  wherever  that  is  true,  the  door  to  universal  slaughter 
is  wide  open.  Let  him  who  questions  this  take  Virginia  as  a  case  in  point. 
A  loyal  Virginian  told  me  only  this  year  that  in  his  state  the  warden 
system  is  an  ineffective  farce,  and  the  game  is  not  protected,  because  the 
wardens  can  not  afford  to  patrol  the  state  for  nothing. 

This  condition  prevails  in  a  number  of  states,  north  and  south,  espe- 
cially south.  It  is  my  belief  that  throughout  nine-tenths  of  the  South, 
the  negroes  and  poor  whites  are  slaughtering  birds  exactly  as  they  please. 
It  is  the  permanent  residents  of  the  haunts  of  birds  and  game  that  are 
exterminating  the  wild  life. 

The  value  of  the  birds  as  destroyers  of  noxious  insects,  has  been  set 
forth  in  Chapter  XXIII.  Their  total  value  is  enormous — or  it  would 
be  if  the  birds  were  alive  and  here  in  their  normal  numbers.  To-day  there 
are  about  one-tenth  as  many  birds  as  were  alive  and  working  thirty  years 
ago.  During  the  past  thirty  years  the  destruction  of  our  game  birds 
has  been  enormous,  and  the  insectivorous  birds  have  greatly  decreased. 

The  damages  annually  inflicted  upon  the  farm,  orchard  and  garden 
crops  of  this  country  are  very  great.  When  a  city  is  destroyed  by  earth- 
quake or  fire,  and  $100,000,000  worth  of  property  is  swept  away,  we  are 
racked  with  horror  and  pity;  and  the  cities  of  America  pour  out  money 
like  water  to  relieve  the  resultant  distress.  We  are  shocked  because  we 
can  see  the  flames,  the  smoke  and  the  ruins. 

And  yet,  we  annually  endure  with  perfect  equanimity  {because  we 
can  not  see  itf)  a  loss  of  nearly  $400,000,000  worth  of  value  that  is  de- 
stroyed by  insects.  The  damage  is  inflicted  silently,  insidiously,  without 
any  scare  heads  or  wooden  type  in  the  newspapers,  and  so  we  pay  the 
price  without  protest.  We  know — when  we  stop  to  think  of  it — that 
not  all  this  loss  falls  upon  the  producer.  We  know  that  every  consumer 
of  bread,  cereals,  vegetables  and  fruit  pays  his  share  of  this  loss!  To-day, 
millions  of  people  are  groaning  under  the  "increased  cost  of  living." 
The  bill  for  the  federal  protection  of  all  migratory  birds  is  directly  in- 
tended to  decrease  the  cost  of  living,  by  preventing  outrageous  waste; 
but  of  all  the  persons  to  whom  the  needs  of  that  bill  arc  presented,  how 
many  will  take  the  time  to  promote  its  quick  passage  by  direct  appeals 
to  their  members  of  Congress?     We  shall  see.    . 

The  good  that  would  be  accomplished,  annually,  by  the  enactment  of 
a  law  for  the  federal  protection  of  all  migratory  birds  is  beyond  com- 
putation; but  it  is  my  belief  that  within  a  very  few  years  the  increase 
in  bird  life  would  prevent  what  is  now  an  annual  loss  of  $250,000,000. 
It  is  beyond  the  power  of  man  to  protect  his  crops  and  fruit  and  trees  as 
the  bird  millions  would  protect  them — if  they  were  here  as  they  were  in 
1870.  The  migratory  bird  bill  is  of  vast  importance  because  it  would 
throw  the  strong  arm  of  federal  protection  around  610  species  of  birds. 


306  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

The  power  of  Uncle  Sam  is  respected  and  feared  in  many  places  where 
the  power  of  the  state  is  ignored. 

The  list  of  migratory  birds  includes  most  of  the  perching  birds;  all 
the  shore  birds  {great  destroyers  of  bad  insects) ;  all  the  swifts  and 
swallows ;  the  goat-suckers  (whippoorwill  and  nighthawk) ;  some  of 
the  woodpeckers;  most  of  the  rails;  pigeons  and  doves;  many  of  the 
hawks;  some  of  the  cranes  and  herons  and  all  the  geese,  ducks  and 
swans. 

A  movement  for  the  federal  protection  of  migratory  game  birds  was 
proposed  to  Congress  by  George  Shiras,  3rd,  who  as  a  member  of  the 
House  in  the  58th  Congress  introduced  a  bill  to  secure  that  end.  An 
excellent  brief  on  that  subject  by  Mr.  Shiras  appeared  in  the  printed 
hearing  on  the  McLean  bill,  held  on  March  6,  1912,  page  18.  Omitting 
the  bills  introduced  in  the  59th,  60th  and  61st  sessions,  inention  need 
be  made  only  of  the  measures  under  consideration  in  the  present  Congress. 
One  of  these  is  a  bill  introduced  by  Representative  J.  W.  Weeks,  of 
Massachusetts,  and  another  is  the  bill  of  Representative  D.  R.  Anthony, 
Jr.,  of  Kansas,  of  the  same  purport. 

Finally,  on  April  24,  1912,  an  adequate  and  entirely  reasonable  bill 
was  introduced  in  the  Senate  by  Senator  George  P.  McLean,  of  Con- 
necticut, as  No.  6497  (Calendar  No.  606).  This  bill  provides  federal 
protection  for  all  migratory  birds,  and  embraces  all  save  a  very  few  of  the 
species  that  are  specially  destructive  to  noxious  insects.  The  bill  provides 
national  protection  to  the  farmer's  and  fruit-grower's  best  friends.  It  is 
entitled  to  the  enthusiastic  support  of  90,000,000  of  people,  native  and 
alien.  Every  producer  of  farm  products  and  every  consumer  of  them  owes 
it  to  himself  to  write  at  once  to  his  member  of  Congress  and  ask  him 
(1)  to  urge  the  speedy  consideration  of  the  bill  for  the  federal  protection 
of  all  migratory  birds,  (2)  to  vote  for  it,  and  (3)  to  work  for  it  until  it  is 
passed.  It  matters  not  which  one  of  the  three  bills  described  finally 
becomes  a  law.  Will  the  American  people  act  rationally  about  this 
matter,  and  protect  their  own  interests  ? 

Suppress  the  Sale  of  All  Native  Wild  Game. — The  deadly  effect 
of  the  commercial  slaughter  of  game  and  its  sale  for  food  is  now  becoming 
well  understood  by  the  American  people.  One  by  one  the  various  state 
legislatures  have  been  putting  up  the  bars  against  the  exportation  or  sale 
of  any  "game  protected  by  the  state."  The  U.  S.  Department  of  Agri- 
culture says,  through  Henry  Oldys,  that  "free  marketing  of  wild  game 
leads  swiftly  to  extermination;"  and  it  is  literally  true. 

Up  to  March,  1911,  it  appears  that  several  states  prohibited  the  sale 
of  game,  sixteen  states  permitted  the  sale  of  all  unprotected  game,  and 
in  eight  more  there  was  partial  prohibition.  Unfortunately,  however, 
many  of  these  states  permitted  the  sale  of  imported  game.  Now,  since 
it  happened  to  be  a  fact  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  states  prohibit  the 
export  of  their  game,  as  well  as  the  sale  of  it,  a  very  large  quantity  of 
such  game  as  quail,  ruffed  grouse,  snipe,  woodcock  and  shore  birds  was 
illegally  shot  for  the  market,  exported  in  defiance  both  of  state  laws  and 


NEW  GAME  LAWS   THAT   ARE   NEEDED 


307 


PREPAREP  b^ 

L.S.B10LOGICA.L  ScRiri' 

i  MARCH.  1911. 

i&TtNDEp-TO  Wov,  (9U 


HH       Sale  or  Omt  r>oh.Mt«)  JM£^      S-^lc  »'  Ncarl)  .^11  Ginic  Piol.iMtnl 

EIGHTEEN    STATES   ENTIRELY    PROHIBIT  THE  SALE  OP  GAME 
WHY  DO  THE  OTHERS  LAG  BEHIND? 

the  federal  Lacey  Act,  and  sold  to  the  detriment  of  the  states  that  pro- 
duced it.  In  other  words,  in  the  laws  of  each  state  that  merely  souo^ht 
to  protect  their  own  game,  regardless  of  the  game  of  neighboring  slates, 
there  was  not  merely  a  loop-hole,  but  there  was  a  gap  wide  enough  to 
drive  through  with  a  coach  and  four.  The  ruffed  grouse  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  Connecticut  often  were  butchered  to  make  Gotham  holi- 
days in  joyous  contempt  of  the  laws  at  both  ends  of  the  Hne.  As  a 
natural  result  the  game  of  the  Atlantic  coast  was  disappearing  at  a 
frightful  rate. 

In  1911,  the  no-sale-of-game  law  of  New  York  was  born  out  of  sheer 
desperation.  The  Army  of  Destruction  went  up  to  Albany  well -organized, 
well  provided  with  money  and  attorneys,  with  three  senators  in  the 
Senate  and  two  assemblymen  in  the  lower  house,  to  wage  merciless  war- 
fare on  the  whole  wild-life  cause.  The  market  gunners  and  game  dealers 
not  only  proposed  to  repeal  the  law  against  spring  shooting  but  also  to 
defeat  all  legislation  that  might  be  attempted  to  restrict  the  sale  of  game, 
or  impose  bag  limits  on  wild  fowl.  The  Milliners'  Association  proposed 
to  wipe  off  the  books  the  Butcher  law  against  the  use  of  the  plumage  of 
wild  birds  in  millinery,  and  an  assemblyman  was  committed  to  that  cause 
as  its  special  champion. 

Then  it  was  that  all  the  friends  of  wild  life  in  the  Empire  State  re- 
solved upon  a  death  grapple  with  the  Destroyers,  and  a  fight  to  an  abso- 
ute  finish.  The  Bayne  bill,  entirely  prohibiting  the  sale  of  all  native 
wild  game  throughout  the  state  of  New  York,  was  drafted  and  thrown 


308  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

into  the  ring,  and  the  struggle  began.  At  first  the  no-sale-of-game  bill 
looked  like  sheer  madness,  but  no  sooner  was  it  fairly  launched  than 
supporters  came  flocking  in  from  every  side.  All  the  organizations  of 
sportsmen  and  friends  of  wild  life  combined  in  one  mighty  army,  the 
strength  of  which  was  irresistible.  The  real  sportsmen  of  the  state 
quickly  realized  that  the  no-sale  bill  was  directly  in  the  interest  of  legitimate 
sport.  The  great  mass  of  people  who  love  wild  life,  and  never  kill,  were 
quick  to  comprehend  the  far-reaching  importance  of  the  measure,  and 
they  supported  it,  with  money  and  enthusiasm. 

The  members  of  the  legislature  received  thousands  of  letters  from 
their  constituents,  asking  them  to  support  the  Bayne-Blauvelt  bill.  They 
did  so.  On  its  passage  through  the  two  houses,  only  one  vote  was  recorded 
against  it!  Incidentally,  every  move  attempted  by  the  Army  of  De- 
struction was  defeated  and  in  the  final  summing  up  the  defeat  amounted 
to  an  utter  rout. 

In  1912,  after  a  tremendous  struggle,  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts 
passed  a  counterpart  of  the  Bayne  law,  and  took  her  place  in  the  front 
rank  of  states.  That  was  a  great  fight.  The  market-gunners  of  Cape 
Cod,  the  game  dealers  and  other  interests  entered  the  struggle  with  men 
in  the  lower  house  of  the  legislature  specially  elected  to  look  after  their 
interests.  Just  as  in  New  York  in  1911,  they  proposed  to  repeal  the 
existing  laws  against  spring  shooting  and  throw  the  markets  wide  open 
to  the  sale  of  game.  From  first  to  last,  through  three  long  and  stormy 
months,  the  Destroyers  fought  with  a  degree  of  determination  and  per- 
sistence worthy  of  a  better  cause.  They  contested  with  the  Defenders 
every  inch  of  ground.  In  New  York,  the  Destroyers  were  overwhelmed 
by  the  tidal  wave  of  Defenders,  but  in  Massachusetts  it  was  a  prolonged 
hand-to-hand  fight  on  the  ramparts.  Five  times  was  a  bill  to  repeal  the 
spring-shooting  law  introduced  and  defeated! 

Even  after  the  bill  had  passed  both  houses  by  good  majorities,  the 
Governor  declared  that  he  could  not  sign  it.  And  then  there  poured  into 
the  Executive  offices  such  a  flood  of  callers,  letters,  telegrams  and  tele- 
phone calls  that  he  became  convinced  that  the  People  desired  the  law; 
so  he  signed  the  bill  in  deference  to  the  wishes  of  the  majority. 

The  principle  that  the  sale  of  game  is  wrong,  and  fatal  to  the  existence 
of  a  supply  of  game,  is  as  fixed  and  unassailable  as  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
Its  universal  acceptance  is  only  a  question  of  intelligence  and  common 
honesty.  The  open  states  owe  it  to  themselves  and  each  other  to  enact 
both  the  spirit  and  the  letter  of  the  Bayne  law,  and  do  it  quickly,  before 
it  is  too  late  to  profit  by  it !  Let  them  remember  the  heath  hen, — amply 
protected  when  entirely  too  late  to  save  it  from  extinction! 

It  is  fairly  beyond  question  that  the  killing  of  wild  game  for  the 
market,  and  its  sale  in  the  "open  season"  and  out  of  it,  is  responsible  for 
the  disappearance  of  at  least  fifty  per  cent  of  our  stock  of  American 
feathered  game.  It  is  the  market-gunner,  the  game-hog  who  shoots  "for 
sport "  and  sells  his  game,  and  the  game  dealer,  who  have  swept  away  the 
wild  ducks,  the  ruffed  grouse,  the   quail  and  the  prairie  chickens  that 


NEW  GAME  LAWS    THAT  ARE   NEEDED 


309 


Migration  Area  of  II  species 

of  Duclcs  that  winter  on 

Carrituck  Sound. 


'  Migration  Area  of 

>  5  species  of  Ducks 

'  r 

1  that  winter  on 

'  Carrituclc  Sound. 


THE 
THREE  GREAT 
KILLING-GROUNDS. 

16  species  of 

Ducks   "  winter  " 

on  the  three  great 

Bays  where  they 

can  get  food. 

These  are : 
Great  South   Bay, 
Sarnegat    Bay  and 
Carrituck  Sound. 

On  the  latter 

probably    200,000 

wild  fowl  are 

killed  annually 

for  northern  markets. 


THIS  MAP  SHOWS 

HOW  THE  SALE  OF  DUCKS  KILLED  ON  CARRITUCK  SOUND 

ROBS  THE  PEOPLE  OF  16  STATES,  FOR  THE  BENEFIT  OF  A  FEW. 

STOP    THE    SALE    OF    CAME! 


SOUND 


MAP  USED  IN  THE  CAMPAIGN  FOR  THE  BAYNE  LAW 


thirty  years  ago  were  abundant  on  their  natural  ranges.  The  foolish 
farmers  of  the  middle  West  permitted  the  market-hunters  of  Chicago  and 
the  East  to  slaughter  their  own  legitimate  game  by  the  barrel  and  the 
car-load,  and  ship  it  "East,"  to  market.  To-day  the  waters  of  Currituck 
Sound  are  a  wholesale  slaughter-place  for  migratory  wild  fowl  with  which 
to  supply  the  markets  of  Baltimore,  Washington  and  Philadelphia. 
Furthermore,  the  market  gunners  of  Currituck  are  robbing  the  people 
of  16  states  of  tens  of  thousands  of  wild-fowl  that  legitimately  belong 
to  them,  during  the  annual  autumn  flight.  The  accompanying  map 
shows  how  it  is  done. 

To-day,  the  cash  rewards  of  the  market-hunter  who  can  reach  a  large 
city  with  his  product  are  dangerously  great.  Observe  the  following 
wholesale  prices  that  prevailed  in  New  York  city  in  1910,  just  prior  to 
the  passage  of  the  Bayne  law.  They  were  compiled  and  published  by 
Henry  Oldys,  of  the  Biological  Survey. 


Grouse,  domestic per  pair. 

Grouse,  foreign "       "  . 

Partridge,  domestic "       "  . 


$3.00 
.$1.25  to  1.75 
.  3.50  "     4.00 


310 


OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 


" 

1.50  '• 

2.00 

dozen.  . 

2.50  " 

3.50 

" 

2.00  " 

3.00 

pair.  .  .  . 

2.25  " 

3.00 

1.50  " 

2.50 
1.25 

.75  " 

1.00 

.75  " 

.90 

.50  " 

.75 

dozen.  . 

1.00 
.60 

pound. . 

.22  " 

.25 

" 

.30  " 

.35 

Woodcock,  domestic " 

Golden  plover per 

English  snipe " 

Canvasback  duck per 

Redhead  duck " 

Mallard  duck " 

Bluewing  teal " 

Greenwing  teal .    " 

Broadbill  duck " 

Rail,  No.  1 per 

Rail,  No.2 " 

Venison,  whole  deer per 

Venison,  saddle " 

All  our  feathered  game  is  rapidly  slipping  away  from  us.  Are  we  going 
to  save  anything  from  the  wreck?  Will  we  so  weakly  manage  the  game 
situation  that  later  on  there  will  be  no  legitimate  bird-shooting  for  our 
younger  sons,  and  our  grandsons? 

All  laws  that  permit  the  killing  of  game  for  the  market,  and  the  sale 
of  it  afterward,  are  class  legislation  of  the  worst  sort.  They  permit  a 
hundred  men  selfishly  to  slaughter  for  their  own  pockets  the  game  that 
rightfully  belongs  to  a  hundred  thousand  men  and  boys  who  shoot  for  the 
legitimate  recreation  that  such  field  sports  afford.  Will  any  of  the  sports- 
men of  America  "stand  for"  this  until  the  game  is  all  gone? 

The  people  who  pay  big  prices  for  game  in  the  hotels  and  restaurants 
of  our  big  cities  are  not  men  who  need  that  game  as  food.  Far  from  it. 
They  can  obtain  scores  of  fine  meat  dishes  without  destroying  the  wild 
flocks.  In  civilized  countries  wild  game  is  no  longer  necessary  as  "food," 
to  satisfy  hunger,  and  ward  off  starvation.  In  the  United  States  the  day 
of  the  hungry  Indian-fighting  pioneer  has  gone  by  and  there  is  an 
abundance  of  food  everywhere. 

The  time  to  temporize  and  feel  timid  over  the  game  situation  has  gone 
by.  The  situation  is  desperate;  and  nothing  but  strong  and  vigorous 
measures  will  avail  anything  worth  while.  The  sale  of  all  wild  game 
should  be  stopped,  everywhere  and  at  all  seasons,  throughout  all  North 
America,  and  throughout  the  world.  To-day  this  particular  curse  is 
being  felt  even  in  India. 

It  is  the  duty  of  every  true  sportsman,  every  farmer  who  owns  a  gun, 
and  every  lover  of  wild  life,  to  enter  into  the  campaign  for  the  passage  of 
bills  absolutely  prohibiting  all  traffic  in  wild  game  no  matter  what  its 
origin.  Of  course  the  market  hunters,  the  game-hogs  and  the  game 
dealers  will  bitterly  oppose  them,  and  hire  a  lobby  to  attempt  to  defeat 
them.  But  the  fight  for  no-sale-of-game  is  now  on,  and  it  must  not  stop 
short  of  complete  victory. 

Reasons  Why  the  Sale  of  Wild  Game  Should  Cease  Everywhere 

1. — Because  fully  95  per  cent  of  our  legitimate  stock  of  feathered 
game  has  already  been  destroyed. 

2. — Because  if  market -gunning  and  the  sale  of  game  continue  ten 
years  longer,  all  our  feathered  game  will  be  swept  away. 


NEW    GAME    LAWS    THAT    ARE    NEEDED  311 

3. — Because  when  the  sale  of  game  was  permitted  one  dealer  was 
able  "to  sell  1,000,000  game  birds  per  year  in  New  York  City,  so  he  himself 
said. 

4 — Because  it  is  a  fixed  fact  that  every  wild  species  of  mammal,  bird 
or  reptile  that  is  pursued  for  money-making  purposes  eventually  is  wiped 
out  of  existence.     Even  the  whales  of  the  sea  are  no  exception. 

5 — Because  at  least  50  per  cent  of  the  decrease  in  our  feathered  garne 
is  due  to  market-gunning,  and  the  sale  of  game.  Look  at  the  prairie 
chicken  of  the  Mississippi' Valley,  and  the  ruffed  grouse  of  New  England. 

6. — Because  the  laws  that  permit  the  commercial  slaughter  of  wild 
birds  for  the  benefit  of  less  than  five  per  cent  of  the  inhabitants  of  any 
state  are  directly  against  the  interest  of  the  95  per  cent  of  other  people, 
to  who}yi  that  game  partly  belongs. 

7 — Because  game  killed  "for  sale"  is  not  intended  to  satisfy  "hun- 
ger." The  people  who  eat  game  in  large  cities  do  not  know  what  hunger 
is,  save  by  hearsay.  Purchased  game  is  used  chiefly  in  over-feeding;  and 
as  a  rule  it  does  far  more  harm  than  good. 

8 — Because  the  greatest  value  to  be  derived  from  any  game  bird  is 
in  seeing  it,  and  photographing  it,  and  enjoying  its  living  company  in  its 
native  haunts.  Who  will  love  the  forests  when  they  become  destitute  of 
wild  life,  and  desolate? 

9. — Because  stopping  the  sale  of  game  will  help  bring  back  the  game 
birds  to  us,  in  a  few  years. 

10. — Because  the  pace  that  New  York  and  Massachusetts  have  set  in 
this  matter  will  render  it  easier  to  procure  the  passage  of  Bayne  laws  in 
other  states. 

11 — Because  those  who  legitimately  desire  game  for  their  tables  can 
be  supplied  from  the  game  farms  and  preserves  that  now  are  coming  into 
existence. 

When  New  York's  far-reaching  Bayne  bill  became  a  law,  the  follow- 
ing dead  birds  lay  in  cold  storage  in  New  York  City : 

Wild  duck 98,156 

Plover 48,780 

Quail 14,227 

Grouse 21,202 

Snipe 7,825 

Woodcock 767 

Rail •_ 419 

191,376 

They  represented  the  last  slaughterings  of  American  game  for  New 
York.  To-day  the  remaining  plague-spots  are  Chicago,  Philadelphia. 
San  Francisco,  Baltimore,  Washington  and  New  Oricans;  but  in  New 
Orieans  the  brakes  have  at  last  (1912)  been  applied,  and  the  market 
slaughter  that  formerly  prevailed  in  that  state  has  at  least  been  checked. 

As  an  instance  of  persistent  market  shooting  on  the  greatest  ducking 


312  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

waters  of  the  eastern  United  States,  I  offer  this  report  from  a  trustworthy 
agent  sent  to  Currituck  Sound,  North  Carolina,  in  March,  1911. 

I  beg  to  submit  the  following  information  relative  to  the  number  of  wild  ducks- 
and  geese  shipped  from  this  market  and  killed  in  the  waters  of  Back  Bay  and  the  upper 
or  north  end  of  Currituck  Sound,  from  October  20th  to  March  1st,  inclusive. 

Approximately  there  were  killed  and  shipped  in  the  territory  above  named,  130,000 
to  135,000  wild  ducks  and  between  1400  and  1500  wild  geese.  From  Currituck  Sound 
and  its  tributaries  there  were  shipped  approximately  200,000  wild  ducks. 

You  will  see  from  the  above  figures  that  each  year  the  market  shooter  exacts  a 
tremendous  toll  from  the  wild  water  fowl  in  these  waters,  and  it  is  only  a  question  of  a 
short  time  when  the  wild  duck  will  be  exterminated,  unless  we  can  stop  the  ruthless 
slaughter.  The  last  few  years  I  have  noted  a  great  decrease  in  the  number  of  wild 
ducks;  some  of  the  species  are  practically  extinct.  I  have  secured  the  above  information 
from  a  most  reliable  source,  and  the  figures  given  approximately  cannot  be  questioned.. 

The  effect  of  the  passage  of  the  Bayne  law,  closing  the  greatest  Ameri- 
can market  against  the  sale  of  game  was  an  immediate  decrease  of  ftdly 
fifty  per  cent  in  the  number  of  ducks  and  geese  slaughtered  on  Currituck 
Sound.  The  dealers  refused  to  buy  the  birds,  and  one-half  the  killers 
were  compelled  to  hang  up  their  guns  and  go  to  work.  The  duck-slaugh- 
terers felt  very  much  enraged  by  the  passage  of  the  law,  and  at  first  were 
inclined  to  blame  the  northern  members  of  Currituck  ducking  clubs  for 
the  passage  of  the  measure;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  not  one  of  the  persons 
blamed  took  any  part  whatever  in  the  campaign  for  the  new  law. 

The  Unfairness  of  Spring  Shooting. — The  shooting  of  game  birds 
in  late  winter  and  spring  is  to  be  mentioned  only  to  be  condemned.  It  is 
grossly  unfair  to  the  birds,  outrageous  in  principle,  and  most  unsports- 
manlike, no  matter  whether  the  law  permits  it  or  not.  Why  it  is  that 
any  state  like  Iowa,  for  example,  can  go  on  killing  game  in  spring  is  more 
than  I  can  understand.  I  have  endeavored  to  find  a  reason  for  it,  in  Iowa, 
but  the  only  real  reason  is: — "  The  boys  want  the  birds!" 

I  think  we  have  at  last  reached  the  point  where  it  may  truthfully  be 
said  that  now  no  gentleman  shoots  birds  in  spring.  If  the  plea  is  made 
that  "if  we  don't  shoot  ducks  in  the  spring  we  can't  shoot  them  at  all!" 
then  the  answer  is — if  you  can't  shoot  game  like  high-minded,  red- 
blooded  sportsman,  donH  shoot  it  at  all!  A  gentleman  can  not  afford  to 
barter  his  standing  and  his  own  self-respect  for  a  few  ducks  shot  in  the 
spring  when  the  birds  are  going  north  to  lay  their  eggs.  And  the  man  who 
insists  on  shooting  in  spring  may  just  as  well  go  right  on  and  do  various 
other  things  that  are  beyond  the  pale,  such  as  shoot  quail  on  the  ground, 
shoot  does  and  fawns,  and  fish  for  trout  with  gang  hooks. 

There  are  no  longer  two  sides  to  what  once  was  the  spring  shooting 
question.  Even  among  savages,  the  breeding  period  of  the  wild  creatures 
is  under  taboo.  Then  if  ever  may  the  beasts  and  birds  cry  "King's 
excuse ! "  It  has  been  positively  stated  in  print  that  high-class  fox  hounds 
have  been  known  to  refuse  to  chase  a  pregnant  fox,  even  when  in  full  ^dew. 


CHAPTER  XXXIIT 
BRINGING  BACK  THE  VANISHED  BIRDS  AND  GAME 

The  most  charming  trait  of  wild-Hfe  character  is  the  alacrity  and 
confidence  with  which  wild  birds  and  mammals  respond  to  the  friendly 
advances  of  human  friends.  Those  who  are  not  very  familiar  with  the 
mental  traits  of  our  wild  neighbors  may  at  first  find  it  difficult  to  com- 
prehend the  marvelous  celerity  with  which  both  birds  and  mammals 
recognize  friendly  overtures  from  man,  and  respond  to  them. 

At  the  present  juncture,  this  state  of  the  wild-animal  mind  becomes 
a  factor  ^of  great  importance  in  determining  what  we  can  do  to  prevent 
the  extermination  of  species,  and  to  promote  the  increase  and  return 
of  wild  life. 

I  think  that  there  is  not  a  single  wild  mainmal  or  bird  species  now 
living  that  can  not,  or  does  not,  quickly  recognize  protection,  and  take 
advantage  of  it.  The  most  conspicuous  of  all  familiar  examples  are  the 
wild  animals  of  the  Yellowstone  Park.  They  embrace  the  elk,  mountain 
-sheep,  antelope,  mule  deer,  the  black  bear  and  even  the  grizzly.  No  one 
•can  say  precisely  how  long  those  several  species  were  in  ascertaining  that 
it  was  safe  to  trust  themselves  within  easy  rifle-shot  of  man ;  but  I  think 
it  was  about  five  years.  Birds  recognize  protection  far  more  quickly 
than  mammals.  In  a  comparatively  short  time  the  naturally  wild  and 
wary  big  game  of  the  Yellowstone  Park  became  about  as  tame  as  range 
■cattle.  It  was  at  least  fifteen  years  ago  that  the  mule  deer  began  to 
frequent  the  parade  ground  at  the  Mammoth  Hot  Springs  military  post, 
and  receive  there  their  rations  of  hay. 

Whenever  you  see  a  beautiful  photograph  of  a  large  band  of  big- 
Tiorn  sheep  or  mule  deer  taken  at  short  range  amid  Rocky  Mountain 
■scenery,  you  are  safe  in  labeling  it  as  having  come  from  the  Yellowstone 
Park.  The  prong-horned  antelojje  herd  is  so  tame  that  it  is  difficult  to 
keep  it  out  of  the  streets  of  Gardiner,  on  the  Montana  side  of  the  line. 

But  the  bears!  Who  has  not  heard  the  story  of  the  bears  of  the 
Yellowstone  Park, — how  black  bears  and  grizzlies  stalk  out  of  the  woods, 
■every  day,  to  the  garbage  dumping-ground;  how  black  bears  actually 
have  come  into  the  hotels  for  food,  without  breaking  the  truce,  and  how 
the  grizzlies  boldly  raid  the  grub-wagons  and  cook-tents  of  campers, 
taking  just  what  they  please,  because  they  know  that  no  man  dares  to 
shoot  them!  Indeed,  those  raiding  bears  long  ago  became  a  public 
nuisance,  and  many  of  them  have  been  caught  in  steel  box-traps  and 
■shipped  to  zoological  gardens,  in  order  to  get  them  out  of  the  way.  And 
yet,  outside  the  Park  boundaries,  everywhere,  the  bears  are  as  wary  and 
wild  as  the  wildest. 


314  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

The  arrogance  of  the  bears  that  couldn't  be  shot  once  led  to  a  droll 
and  also  exciting  ejiisode. 

During  the  period  when  Mr.  C.  J.  Jones  ("Buffalo"  Jones)  was 
superintendent  of  the  wild  animals  of  the  Park,  the  indignities  inflicted 
upon  tourist  campers  by  certain  grizzly  bears  quite  abraded  his  nerves. 
He  obtained  from  Major  Pitcher  authority  to  punish  and  reform  a  certain 
grizzly,  and  went  about  the  matter  in  a  thoroughly  Buffalo-Jonesian 
manner.  He  procured  a  strong  lariat  and  a  bean-pole  seven  feet  long 
and  repaired  to  the  camp  that  was  troubled  by  too  much  grizzly 

The  particular  offender  was  a  full-grown  male  grizzly  who  had  become 
a  notorious  raider.  At  the  psychological  moment  Jones  lassoed  him  in 
short  order,  getting  a  firm  hold  on  the  bear's  left  hind  leg.  Quickly  the 
end  of  the  rope  was  thrown  over  a  limb  of  the  nearest  tree,  and  in  a  trice 
Ephraim  found  himself  swinging  head  downward  between  the  heavens 
and  the  earth.    And  then  his  punishment  began. 

Buffalo  Jones  thrashed  him  soundly  with  the  bean-pole!  The  out- 
raged bear  swung  to  and  fro,  whirled  round  and  round,  clawing  and 
snapping  at  the  empty  air,  roaring  and  bawling  with  rage,  scourged  in 
flesh  and  insulted  in  spirit.  As  he  swung,  the  bean-pole  searched  out 
the  different  parts  of  his  anatomy  with  a  wonderful  degree  of  neatness 
and  precision.  Between  rage  and  indignation  the  grizzly  nearly  ex- 
ploded. A  moving-picture  camera  was  there,  and  since  that  day  that 
truly  moving  scene  has  amazed  and  thrilled  countless  thousands  of  people. 

When  it  was  over,  Mr.  Jones  boldly  turned  the  bear  loose !  Although 
its  rage  was  as  boundless  as  the  glories  of  the  Yellowstone  Park,  it  paused 
not  to  rend  any  of  those  present,  but  headed  for  the  tall  timber,  and  with 
many  an  indignant  "Woof!  Woof!"  it  plunged  in  and  disappeared.  It 
was  two  or  three  years  before  that  locality  was  again  troubled  by  impu- 
dent grizzly  bears. 

And  what  is  the  mental  attitude  of  every  Rocky  Mountain  black  or 
grizzly  bear  outside  of  the  Yellowstone  Park?  It  is  colossal  suspicion  of 
man,  perpetual  fear,  and  a  clean  pair  of  heels  the  moment  man-scent  or 
man-sight  proclaims  the  proximity  of  the  Arch  Enemy  of  Wild  Creatures. 
And  yet  there  are  one  or  two  men  who  tell  the  American  public  that 
wild  animals  do  not  think,  that  they  do  not  reason,  and  are  governed  only 
by  "instinct"! 

"A  little  knowledge  is  a  dangerous  thing!" 

Taming  Wild  Birds. — As  incontestable  proof  of  the  receptive  facul- 
ties of  birds,  I  will  cite  the  taming  of  wild  birds  in  the  open,  by  friendly 
advances.  There  are  hundreds,  aye,  thousands,  of  men,  women,  boys 
and  girls  who  could  give  interesting  and  valuable  personal  testimony  on 
this  point. 

My  friend  J.  Alden  Loring  (one  of  the  naturalists  of  the  Roosevelt 
African  Expedition),  is  an  ardent  lover  of  wild  birds  and  mammals. 
The  taming  of  wild  creatures  in  the  open  is  one  of  his  pastimes,  and  his 
results  serve  well  to  illustrate  the  marvelous  readiness  of  our  wild  neigh- 


BRINGING    BACK    VANISHED   BIRDS   AND   GAME 


315 


sl.v   \\  11  1) 


H  MR.  l.ORING 


bors  to  become  close  friends  with  man  when  protected.  1  will  quote  from 
one  of  Mr.  Loring's  letters  on  this  subject : 

"  Taming  wild  birds  is  a  new  field  in  nature  study,  and  one  never  can 
tell  what  success  he  will  have  until  he  has  experimented  with  different 
species.  Some  birds  tame  much  more  easily  than  others.  On  three  or 
four  occasions  I  have  enticed  a  chickadee  to  my  hand  at  the  first  attempt, 
while  in  other  cases  it  has  taken  from  fifteen  minutes  to  a  whole  day. 

"Chipping  sparrows  that  frequent  my  doorway  I  have  tamed  in  two 
days.  A  nuthatch  required  three  hours  before  it  would  fly  to  my  hand, 
although  it  took  food  from  my  stick  the  first  time  it  was  offered.  When 
you  find  a  bird  on  her  nest,  it  is  of  course  much  easier  to  tame  that  m- 
dividual  that  if  you  had  to  follow  it  about  in  the  open,  and  wait  for  it  to 
come  within  reach  of  a  stick.  By  exercising  extreme  caution,  and  ap- 
proaching^ inch  by  inch,  I  have  climbed  a  tree  to  the  nest  of  a  yellow- 
throated  vireo.  and  at  the  first  attempt  handed  the  bird  a  meal-worm  with 
my  fingers  At  one  time  I  had  two  house  wrens,  a  yellow-throated  vireo. 
a  chipping  sparrow  and  a  flock  of  chickadees  that  would  come  to  my 

hand." 

It  would  be  possible— and  also  delightful— to  fill  a  volume  with 
citations  of  evidence  to  illustrate  the  quick  acceptance  of  man's  pro- 
tection by  wild  birds  and  mammals.  Let  me  draw  a  few  illustrations 
from  my  own  wild  neighbors. 

On  Lake  Agassiz,  in  the  N.  Y.  Zoological  Park,  within  500  feet  of  my 
office  in  the  Administration  Building,  a  pair  of  wild  wood-ducks  made 


316 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


their  nest  last  spring,  and  have  just  finished  rearing  nine  fine,  health}' 
young  birds.  Whenever  you  see  a  woodrduck  rise  and  fly  in  our  Park, 
you  may  know  that  it  is  a  wild  bird.  During  the  summer  of  1912  a 
small  flock  of  wild  wood-ducks  came  every  night  to  oiu*  Wild-Fowl  Pond, 
and  spent  the  night  there. 

A  year  ago,  a  covey  of  eleven  quail  appeared  in  the  Park,  and  have 
persistently  remained  ever  since.  Last  fall  and  winter  they  came  at  least 
twenty  times  to  a  spot  within  forty  feet  of  the  rear  window  of  my  office, 
in  order  to  feed  upon  the  wheat  screenings  that  we  placed  there  for 
them. 

When  we  first  occupied  the  Zoological  Park  grounds,  in  1899,  there 
was  not  one  wild  rabbit  in  the  whole  264  acres.  Presently  the  species 
appeared,  and  rabbits  began  to  hop  about  confidently,  all  over  the  place. 
In  1906,  we  estimated  that  there  were  about  eighty  individuals.  Then 
the  'marauding  cats  began  to  come  in,  and  they  killed  off  the  rabbits 
until  not  one  was  to  be  seen.  Thereupon,  we  addressed  ourselves  to  those 
cats,  in  more  serious  earnest  than  ever  before.  Now  the  cats  have  dis- 
appeared; and  one  day  last  spring,  as  I  left  my  office  at  six  o'clock,  every- 
one else  having  previously  gone,  I  almost  stepped  upon  two  half-grown 
bunnies  that  had  been  visiting  on  the  front  door-mat. 

When  we  were  macadamizing  the  yards  around  the  Elephant  House, 
with  a  throng  of  workmen  all  about  every  day,  a  robin  made  its  nest  on 
the  heavy  channel-iron  frame  of  one  of  the  large  elephant  gates  that 
swung  to  and  fro  nearly  every  day. 

In  1900  we  planted  a  young  pine  tree  in  front  of  our  temporary  office 
building,  within  six  feet  of  a  main  walk;  and  at  once  a  pair  of  robins 
nested  in  it  and  reared  young  there. 


WILD   CREATURES  QUICKLY    RESPOND   TO   FRIENDLY    ADVANCES 
Chickadee  and  Chipmunk  Tamed  by  Mr.  Loring 


BRINGING  BACK    VANISHED    BIRDS  AND   GAME 


317 


THE  COLORADO  OBJECT   LESSON  IN   BRINGING  BACK  THE  DUCKS 


Up  in  Putnam  County,  where  for  five  years  deer  have  been  protected, 
the  exhibitions  that  are  given  each  year  of  the  supreme  confidence  of 
protected  deer  Hterally  astonish  the  natives.  They  are  almost  unafraid 
of  man  and  his  vehicles,  his  cattle  and  his  horses,  but  of  course  they  are 
unwilling  to  be  handled.  Strangers  are  astonished;  but  people  who  know 
something  about  the  mental  attitude  of  wild  animals  under  protection 
know  that  it  is  the  natural  and  inevitable  result  of  real  protection. 

At  Mr.  Frank  vSeaman's  summer  home  in  the  Catskills,  the  phoebe 
birds  nest  on  the  beams  under  the  roof  of  the  porch.  At  my  summer 
home  in  the  Berkshires,  no  sooner  was  our  garage  completed  than  a 
phoebe  built  her  nest  on  the  edge  of  the  lintel  over  the  side  door;  and 
another  built  on  a  drain-pipe  over  the  kitchen  door. 

Near  Port  Jervis,  last  year  a  wild  ruffed  grouse  nested  and  reared  a 
large  brood  in  the  garden  of  Mr.  W.  I.  Mitchell,  within  two  feet  of  the 
foundation  of  the  house. 

On  the  Bull  River  in  the  wilds  of  British  Columbia  two  trappers  of 
my  acquaintance,  Mack  Norboe  and  Charlie  Smith,  once  formed  a  friend- 
ship with  a  wild  weasel.  In  a  very  few  visits,  the  weasel  found  that  it  was 
among  friends,  and  the  trappers'  log  cabin  became  its  home.  I  have  a 
photograph  of  it,  taken  while  it  posed  on  the  door-sill.  The  trappers  said 
that  often  when  returning  at  nightfall  from  their  trap-lines,  the  weasel 
would  meet  them  a  hundred  yards  away  on  the  trail,  and  follow  them 
back  to  the  cabin. 

"  Old  Ben,"  the  big  sea-Hon  who  often  landed  on  the  wharf  at  Av^alon, 
Santa  Catalina,  to  be  fed  on  fish,  was  personalh'^  known  to  thousands  of 
people. 

An  Object  Lesson  in  Protection. — A  remarkable  object  lesson 
in  the  recognition  of  protection  by  wild  ducks  came  under  my  notice  in 


318  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

the  pages  of  "Recreation  Magazine"  in  June,  1903,  when  that  publi- 
cation was  edited  by  G.  O.  Shields.  The  article  was  entitled, — "  A  Haven 
of  Refuge,"  and  the  place  described  well  deserved  the  name.  It  is  im- 
possible for  me  to  impress  upon  the  readers  of  this  volume  with  sufficient 
force  and  clearness  the  splendid  success  that  is  easily  attainable  in  en- 
couraging the  return  of  the  birds.  The  story  of  the  Mosca  "Haven  of 
Refuge"  was  so  well  told  by  Mr.  Charles  C.  Townsend  in  the  publication 
referred  to  above,  that  I  take  pleasure  in  reproducing  it  entire. 

One  mile  north  of  the  little  village  of  Mosca,  Colorado,  in  San  Luis  valley,  lives 
the  family  of  J.  C.  Gray.  On  the  Gray  ranch  there  is  an  artesian  well  which  empties 
into  a  small  pond  about  100  feet  square.  This  pond  is  never  entirely  frozen  over  and 
the  water  emptying  therein  is  warm  even  during  the  coldest  winter. 

Some  five  years  ago,  Mr.  Gray  secured  a  few  wild-duck  eggs,  and  hatched  them  under 
a  hen.  The  little  ducks  were  reared  and  fed  on  the  little  pond.  The  following  spring 
they  left  the  place,  to  return  in  the  fall,  bringing  with  them  broods  of  young;  also  bring- 
ing other  ducks  to  the  home  where  protection  was  afforded  them,  and  plenty  of  good 
feed  was  provided.  Each  year  since,  the  ducks  have  scattered  in  the  spring  to  mate  and 
rear  their  families,  returning  again  with  greatly  increased  numbers  in  the  fall,  and  again 
bringing  strangers  to  the  haven  of  refuge. 

I  drove  out  to  the  ranch  November  24,  1902,  and  found  the  little  pond  almost  black 
with  the  birds,  and  was  fortunate  enough  to  secure  a  picture  of  a  part  of  the  pond  while 
the  ducks  were  thickly  gathered  thereon.  Ice  had  formed  around  the  edges,  and  this 
ice  was  covered  with  ducks.  The  water  was  also  alive  with  others,  which  paid  not  the 
least  attention  to  the  party  of  strangers  on  the  shore. 

From  Mr.  Gray  I  learned  that  there  were  some  600  ducks  of  various  kinds  on  the 
pond  at  that  time,  though  it  was  then  early  for  them  to  seek  winter  quarters.  Later  in 
the  year,  he  assured  me,  there  would  be  betweeen  2,000  and  3,000  teal,  mallards,  canvas- 
backs,  redheads  and  other  varieties,  all  perfectly  at  home  and  fearless  of  danger.  The 
family  have  habitually  approached  the  pond  from  the  house,  which  stands  on  the  south 
side,  and  should  any  person  appear  on  the  north  side  of  the  pond  the  ducks  immediately 
take  fright  and  flight.  Wheat  was  strewn  on  the  ground  and  in  the  water,  and  the 
ducks  waddled  around  us  within  a  few  inches  of  our  feet  to  feed,  paying  not  the  least 
attention  to  us,  or  to  the  old  house-dog  which  walked  near. 

Six  miles  east  of  the  ranch  is  San  Luis  lake,  to  which  these  ducks  travel  almost  daily 
while  the  lake  is  open.  When  they  are  at  the  lake  it  is  impossible  to  approach  within 
gunshot  of  the  then  timid  birds.  Some  unsympathetic  boys  and  men  have  learned  the 
habit  of  the  birds,  and  place  themselves  in  hiding  along  the  course  of  flight  to  and  from 
the  lake.  Many  ducks  are  shot  in  this  way,  but  woe  to  the  person  caught  firing  a  gun 
on  or  near  the  home-pond.  When  away  from  home,  the  birds  are  as  other  wild-ducks 
and  fail  to  recognize  any  members  of  the  Gray  family.  While  at  home  they  follow  the 
boys  around  the  barn-yard,  squawking  for  feed  like  so  many  tame  ducks. 

This  is  the  greatest  sight  I  have  ever  witnessed,  and  one  that  I  could  not  believe 
existed  until  I  had  seen  it.  Certainly  it  is  worth  travelling  many  miles  to  see,  and  no 
one,  after  seeing  it,  would  care  to  shoot  birds  that,  when  kindly  treated,  make  such 
charming  pets. 

Since  the  above  was  published,  the  protected  flocks  of  tame  wild 
ducks  have  become  one  of  the  most  interesting  sights  of  Florida.  At 
Palm  Beach  the  tameness  of  the  wild  ducks  when  within  their  protected 
area,  and  their  wildness  outside  of  it,  has  been  witnessed  by  thousands 
of  visitors. 

The  Saving  of  the  Snowy  Egret  in  the  United  States. — The 
time  was  when  very  many  persons  believed  that  the  devastations  of  the 


BRINGING  BACK    VANISHED    BIRDS   AND    GAME  319 

plume-hunters  of  Florida  and  the  Gulf  Coast  would  be  so  long  continued 
and  so  persistently  followed  up  to  the  logical  conclusion  that  both  species 
of  plume-furnishing  egrets  would  disappear  from  the  avifauna  of  the 
United  States.  This  expectation  gave  rise  to  feelings  of  resentment, 
indignation  and  despair. 

It  happened,  however,  that  almost  at  the  last  moment  a  solitary 
individual  set  on  foot  an  enterprise  calculated  to  preserve  the  snowy 
egret  (which  is  the  smaller  of  the  two  species  involved),  from  final 
extermination.  The  splendid  success  that  has  attended  the  efforts  of  Mr. 
Edward  A.  Mcllhenny,  of  Avery  Island,  Louisiana,  is  entitled  not  only 
to  admiration  and  praise,  but  also  to  the  higher  tribute  of  practical 
imitation.  Mr.  Mcllhenny  is,  first  of  all,  a  lover  of  birds,  and  a  human- 
itarian. He  has  traveled  widely  throughout  the  continent  of  North 
America  and  elsewhere,  and  has  seen  much  of  wild  life  and  man's  influence 
upon  it.  To-day  his  highest  ambition  is  to  create  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Present,  and  as  a  heritage  to  Posterity,  a  mid-continental  chain  of  great 
bird  refuges,  in  which  migrating  wild  fowl  and  birds  of  all  other  species 
may  find  resting-places  and  refuges  during  their  migrations,  and  pro- 
tected feeding-grounds  in  winter.  In  this  grand  enterprise,  the  con- 
summation of  which  is  now  in  progress,  Mr.  Mcllhenny  is  associated  with 
Mr.  Charles  Willis  Ward,  joint  donor  of  the  splendid  Ward-Mcllhenny 
Bird  Preserve  of  13,000  acres,  which  recently  was  presented  to  the  State 
of  Louisiana  by  its  former  owners. 

The  egret  and  heron  preserve,  however,  is  Mr.  Mcllhenny 's  in- 
dividual enterprise,  and  really  furnished  the  motif  of  the  larger  move- 
ment. Of  its  inception  and  development,  he  has  kindly  furnished  me 
the  following  account,  accompanied  by  many  beautiful  photographs  of 
egrets  breeding  in  sanctuary,  one  of  which  appears  on  page  27. 

In  some  recent  publications  I  have  seen  statements  to  the  effect  that  you  believed 
the  egrets  were  nearing  extinction,  owing  to  the  persecution  of  plume  hunters,  so  I  know 
that  you  will  be  interested  in  the  enclosed  photographs,  which  were  taken  in  my  heron 
rookery,  situated  within  100  yards  of  my  factory,  where  I  am  now  sitting  dictating 
this  letter. 

This  rookery  was  started  by  me  in  1896,  because  I  saw  at  that  time  that  the  herons 
of  Louisiana  were  being  rapidly  exterminated  by  plume  hunters.  IVIy  thought  was  that 
the  way  to  preserve  them  would  be  to  start  an  artificial  rookery  of  them  where  they 
could  be  thoroughly  protected.  With  this  end  in  view  I  built  a  small  pond,  taking  in  a 
wet  space  that  contained  a  few  willows  and  other  shrubs  which  grow  in  wet  places. 

In  a  large  cage  in  this  pond,  I  raised  some  snowy  herons.  After  keeping  the  birds  in 
confinement  for  something  over  six  montlis  I  turned  them  loose,  hoping  that  they  would 
come  back  the  next  season,  as  they  were  perfectly  tame  and  were  used  to  seeing  people. 
I  was  rewarded  the  next  season  by  four  of  the  birds  returning,  and  nesting  in  tlie  willows 
in  the  pond.  This  was  the  start  of  a  rookery  that  now  covers  35  acres,  and  contains 
more  than  twenty  thousand  pairs  of  nesting  birds,  embracing  not  only  the  egrets  but 
all  the  species  of  herons  found  in  Louisiana,  besides  many  other  water  birds. 

With  a  view  to  carrying  on  the  preservation  of  our  birds  on  a  larger  scale,  Mr.  Chas. 
W.  Ward  and  I  have  recently  donated  to  the  State  of  Louisiana  13,000  acres  of  what  I 
consider  to  be  tlie  finest  wild  fowl  feeding  ground  on  the  Louisiana  coast,  as  it  contains 
the  only  gravel  beach  for  50  miles,  and  all  of  the  geese  within  that  space  come  daily 
to  this  beach  for  gravel.  This  territory  also  ]:)roduces  a  great  amount  of  natural  food  for 
geese  and  ducks. 


320  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Saving  the  Gulls  and  Terns. — But  for  the  vigorous  and  long- 
continued  efforts  of  the  Audubon  Societies,  I  think  our  coasts  would  by 
this  time  have  been  swept  clean  of  the  gulls  and  terns  that  now  adorn  it. 
Twenty  years  ago  the  milliners  were  determined  to  have  them  all.  The 
fight  for  them  was  long,  and  hotly  contested,  but  the  Audubon  Societies 
won.  It  was  a  great  victory,  and  has  yielded  results  of  great  value  to 
the  country  at  large.  And  yet,  it  was  only  a  small  number  of  persons 
who  furnished  the  money  and  made  the  fight  which  inured  to  the  benefit 
of  the  millions  of  American  people.  Hereafter,  whenever  you  see  an 
American  gull  or  tern,  remind  yourself  that  it  was  saved  to  the  nation 
by  "the  Audubon  people." 

In  times  of  grave  emergency,  such  as  fire,  war  and  scarcity  of  food, 
the  wild  creatures  forget  their  fear  of  man,  and  many  times  actually 
surrender  themselves  to  his  mercy  and  protection.  At  such  times,  hard 
is  the  heart  and  low  is  the  code  of  manly  honor  that  does  not  respond  in 
a  manner  becoming  a  superior  species. 

The  inost  pathetic  wild-animal  situation  ever  seen  in  the  United 
States  on  a  large  scale  is  that  which  for  six  winters  in  succession  forced 
several  thousand  starving  elk  into  the  settlement  of  Jackson  Hole, 
Wyoming,  in  quest  of  food  at  the  hands  of  their  natural  enemies.  The 
elk  lost  all  fear,  partly  because  they  were  not  attacked,  and  they  sur- 
rounded the  log-enclosed  haystacks,  barns  and  houses,  mutely  begging 
for  food.  Previous  to  the  winter  of  1911,  thousands  of  weak  calves  and 
cows  perished  around  the  haystacks.  Mr.  S.  N.  Leek's  wonderftd 
pictures  tell  a  thrilling  but  very  sad  story. 

To  the  everlasting  honor  of  the  people  of  Jackson  Hole,  be  it  recorded 
that  they  rose  like  Men  to  the  occasion  that  confronted  them.  In  1909 
they  gave  to  the  elk  herds  all  the  hay  that  their  domestic  stock  could 
spare,  not  pausing  to  ascertain  whether  they  ever  would  be  reimbursed 
for  it.  They  just  handed  it  out !  The  famishing  animals  literally  mobbed 
the  hay-wagons.  To-day  the  national  government  has  the  situation  in 
hand. 

In  times  of  peace  and  plenty,  the  people  of  Jackson  Hole  take  their 
toll  of  the  elk  herds,  but  their  example  during  starvation  periods  is  to  be 
commended  to  all  men. 

A  Slaughter  of  Restored  Game. — The  case  of  the  chamois  in 
Switzerland  teaches  the  world  a  valuable  lesson  in  how  not  to  slaughter 
game  that  has  come  back  to  its  haunts  through  protected  breeding. 

A  few  years  ago,  one  of  the  provinces  of  Switzerland  took  note  of  the 
fact  that  its  once-abundant  stock  of  chamois  was  almost  extinct,  and 
enacted  a  law  by  which  the  remnant  was  absolutely  protected  for  a  long 
period.  During  those  years  of  protection,  the  animals  bred  and  multi- 
plied, until  finally  the  original  number  was  almost  restored. 

Then, — as  always  in  such  cases, — there  arose  a  strong  demand  for 
an  open  season;  and  eventually  the  government  yielded  to  the  pressure 
of  the  hunters,  and  fixed  a  date  whereon  an  open  season  should  begin. 


322  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

During  the  period  preceding  that  fatal  date,  the  living  chamois,  grown 
half  tame  by  years  of  immunity  from  the  guns,  were  all  carefully  located 
and  marked  down  by  those  who  intended  to  hunt  them.  At  daybreak 
on  the  fatal  day,  the  onset  began.  Guns  and  hunters  were  everywhere, 
and  the  mountains  resounded  with  the  fusillade.  Hundreds  of  chamois 
were  slain,  by  hundreds  of  hunters;  and  by  the  close  of  that  fatal  "open 
season"  the  species  was  more  nearly  exterminated  throughout  that 
region  than  ever  before.  Once  more  those  mountains  were  nice  and  barren 
of  game. 

Let  that  bloody  and  disgracefiil  episode  serve  as  a  warning  to  Ameri- 
cans who  are  tempted  to  demand  an  open  season  on  game  that  has  bred 
back  from  the  verge  of  extinction.  Particularly  do  we  commend  it  to 
the  notice  of  the  people  of  Colorado  who  even  now  are  demanding  an 
open  season  on  the  preserved  mountain  sheep  of  that  state.  The 
granting  of  such  an  open  season  would  be  a  brutal  outrage.  Those 
sheep  are  now  so  tame  and  unsuspicious  that  the  killing  of  them  would 
be  cold-blooded  murder! 

The  Logical  Conclusion. — Within  reasonable  limits,  any  partly- 
destroyed  wild  species  can  be  increased  and  brought  back  by  giving 
absolute  protection  from  harassment  and  slaughter.  When  a  species  is 
struggling  to  recuperate,  it  deserves  to  be  left  entirely  unmolested  until 
it  is  once  more  on  safe  ground. 

Every  breeding  wild  animal  craves  seclusion  and  entire  immunity 
from  excitement  and  all  forms  of  molestation.  Nature  simply  demands 
this  as  her  unassailable  right.  It  is  my  firm  belief  that  any  wild  species 
will  breed  in  captivity  whenever  its  members  are  given  a  degree  of 
seclusion  that  they  deem  satisfactory. 

With  species  that  have  not  been  shot  down  to  a  point  entirely  too 
low,  adequate  protection  generously  long  in  duration  will  bring  back 
their  numbers.  If  the  people  of  the  United  States  so  willed  it,  we  could 
have  wild  white-tailed  deer  in  every  state  and  in  every  county  (save 
city  counties)  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Rocky  Mountains.  We  could 
easily  have  one  thousand  bob  white  quail  for  every  one  now  living.  We 
could  have  squirrels  in  every  grove,  and  songbirds  by  the  million, — merely 
by  protecting  them  from  slaughter  and  molestation.  From  Ohio  to  the 
great  plains,  the  pinnated  grouse  could  be  made  far  more  common  than 
crows    and    blackbirds. 

Inasmuch  as  all  this  is  true, — and  no  one  with  information  will  dis- 
pute it  for  a  moment, — is  it  not  folly  to  seek  to  supplant  our  own  splendid 
native  species  of  game  birds  {that  we  never  yet  have  decently  protected!) 
with  foreign  species  ?  Let  the  American  people  answer  this  question  with 
"Yes"  or  "No." 

The  methods  by  which  our  non-game  birds  can  be  encouraged  and 
brought  back  are  very  simple:  Protect  them,  put  up  shelters  for  them, 
give  them  nest-boxes  in  abundance,  protect  them  from  cats,  dogs,  and  all 
other  forms  of  destruction,  and  feed  those  that  need  to  be  fed.  I  should 
think  that  every  boy  living  in  the  country  would  find  keen  pleasure  in 


BRINGING   BACK    VANISHED    BIRDS   AND    GAME  323 

making  and  erecting  nest-boxes  for  martins,  wrens,  and  squirrels;  in 
putting  up  straw  teepees  in  winter  for  the  quail,  in  feeding  the  quail, 
and  in  nailing  to  the  trees  chunks  of  suet  and  fat  pork  every  winter  for  the 
woodpeckers,  nuthatches,  and  other  winter  residents. 

Will  any  person  now  on  this  earth  live  long  enough  to  see  the  present 
all-pervading  and  devilish  spirit  of  slaughter  so  replaced  by  the  love  of 
wild  creatures  and  the  true  spirit  of  conservation  that  it  will  be  as  rare 
as  it  now  is  common? 

But  let  no  one  think  for  a  moment  that  any  vanishing  species  can  at 
any  time  be  brought  back;  for  that  would  be  a  grave  error.  The  point 
is  always  reached,  by  every  such  species,  that  the  survivors  are  too  few 
to  cope  with  circumstances,  and  recovery  is  impossible.  The  heath  hen 
could  not  be  brought  back,  neither  could  the  passenger  pigeon.  The 
whooping  crane,  the  sage  grouse,  the  trumpeter  swan,  the  wild  turkey, 
and  the  upland  plover  never  will  come  back  to  us,  and  nothing  that  we 
can  do  ever  will  bring  them  back.  Circumstances  are  against  those 
species,  — and  I  fear  against  many  others  also.  Thanks  to  the  fact  that 
the  American  bison  breeds  well  in  captivity,  we  have  saved  that  species 
from  complete  extinction,  but  our  antelope  seems  to  be  doomed. 

It  is  because  of  the  alarming  condition  of  our  best  wild  life  that  quick 
action  and  strong  action  is  vitally  necessary.  We  are  sleeping  on  our 
possibilities. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

INTRODUCED  SPECIES  THAT  HAVE  BEEN  BENEFICIAL 

Man  has  made  numerous  experiments  in  the  transplantation  of  wild 
species  of  mammals  and  birds  from  one  country,  or  continent,  to  another. 
About  one-half  these  efiforts  have  been  beneficial,  and  the  other  half  have 
resulted  disastrously. 

The  transplantation  of  any  wild-animal  species  is  a  leap  in  the  dark. 
On  general  principles  it  is  dangerous  to  meddle  with  the  laws  of  Nature, 
and  attempt  to  improve  upon  the  code  of  the  wilderness.  Our  best 
wisdom  in  such  matters  may  easily  prove  to  be  short-sighted  folly.  The 
trouble  lies  in  the  fact  that  concerning  transplantation  it  is  impossible 
jor  us  to  know  beforehand  all  the  conditions  that  will  affect  it,  or  that  it  will 
effect,  and  how  it  will  work  out.  In  its  own  home  a  species  may  seem  not 
only  harmless,  but  actually  beneficial  to  man.  We  do  not  know,  and  we 
can  not  know,  all  the  influences  that  keep  it  in  check,  and  that  mould  its 
character.  We  do  not  know,  and  we  can  not  know  without  a  trial,  how 
new  environment  will  affect  it,  and  what  new  traits  of  character  it  will 
develop  under  radically  different  conditions.  The  gentle  dove  of  Europe 
may  become  the  tyrant  dove  of  Cathay.  The  Repressed  Rabbit  of  the 
Old  World  becomes  in  Australia  the  Uncontrollable  Rabbit,  a  devastator 
and  a  pest  of  pests. 

No  wild  species  should  be  transplanted  and  set  free  in  a  wild  state  to 
stock  new  regions  without  consulting  men  of  wisdom,  and  following  their 
advice.  It  is  now  against  the  laws  of  the  United  States  to  introduce  and 
acclimatize  in  a  wild  state,  anywhere  in  the  United  States,  any  wild-bird 
species  without  the  approval  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture.  The 
law  is  a  wise  one.  Furthermore,  the  same  principle  should  apply  to  birds 
that  it  is  proposed  to  transplant  from  one  portion  of  the  United  States 
into  another,  especially  when  the  two  are  widely  separated. 

On  this  point,  I  once  learned  a  valuable  lesson,  which  may  well  point 
my  present  moral.    Incidentally,  also,  it  was  a  narrow  escape  for  me! 

A  gentlemen  of  my  acquaintance,  who  admires  the  European  magpie, 
and  is  well  aware  of  its  acceptable  residence  in  various  countries  in  Eu- 
rope, once  requested  my  cooperation  in  securing  and  acclimatizing  at 
his  country  estate  a  number  of  birds  of  that  species.  As  in  duty  bound, 
I  laid  the  matter  before  our  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  asked  for 
an  opinion.  The  Department  replied,  in  efifect,  "Why  import  a  foreign 
magpie  when  we  have  in  the  West  a  species  of  our  own  quite  as  hand- 
some, and  which  could  more  easily  be  transplanted?" 

The  point  seemed  well  taken.    Now,  I  had  seen  much  of  the  American 


BENEFICIAL    INTRODUCED    SPECIES  325 

magpie  in  its  wild  home, — the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  the  western  border 
of  the  Great  Plains, — and  I  thought  I  was  acquainted  with  it.  I  knew 
that  a  few  complaints  against  it  had  been  made,  but  they  had  seemed 
to  me  very  trivial.  To  me  our  magpie  seemed  to  have  a  generally  unob- 
jectionable record. 

Fortunately  for  me,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Hershey,  Assistant  Curator  of 
Ornithology  in  the  Colorado  State  Museum,  for  assistance  in  procuring 
fifty  birds,  for  transplanation  to  the  State  of  New  York.  Mr.  Hershey 
replied  that  if  I  really  wished  the  birds  for  acclimatization,  he  would 
gladly  procure  them  for  me;  but  he  said  that  in  the  thickly-settled  farming 
communities  of  Colorado,  the  magpie  is  now  regarded  as  a  pest.  It 
devours  the  eggs  and  nestlings  of  other  wild  birds,  and  not  only  that,  it 
destroys  so  many  eggs  of  domestic  poultry  that  many  farmers  are  com- 
pelled to  keep  their  egg-laying  hens  shut  up  in  wire  enclosures ! 

Now,  this  condition  happened  to  be  entirely  unknown  to  me,  because 
I  never  had  seen  the  American  magpie  in  action  in  a  farming  community! 
Of  course  the  proposed  experiment  was  promptly  abandoned,  but  it  is 
embarrassing  to  think  how  near  I  came  to  making  a  mistake.  Even  if 
the  magpies  had  been  transplanted  and  had  become  a  nuisance  in  this 
state,  they  could  easily  have  been  exterminated  b}^  shooting;  but  the 
memory  of  the  error  would  have  been  humiliating  to  the  party  of  the 
first  part. 

The  Old  World  Pheasa^'ts  in  America. — In  1881  the  first  Chinese 
ring-necked  pheasants  were  introduced  into  the  United  States,  twelve 
miles  below  Portland,  Oregon;  twelve  males  and  three  females.  The 
next  year,  Oregon  gave  pheasants  a  five-year  close  season.  A  little  later, 
the  golden  and  silver  pheasants  of  China  were  introduced,  and  all  three 
species  throve  mightily,  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  in  Oregon,  Washington 
and  western  British  Columbia.  In  1900,  the  sportsmen  of  Portland 
and  Vancouver  were  shooting  cock  golden  pheasants  according  to  law. 

The  success  of  Chinese  and  Japanese  pheasants  on  the  Pacific  Coast 
soon  led  to  experiments  in  the  more  progressive  states,  at  state  expense. 
State  pheasant  hatcheries  have  been  established  in  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Ohio,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Iowa  and 
California. 

In  many  localities,  the  old-world  pheasants  have  come  to  stay.  The 
rise  and  progress  of  the  ring-neck  in  western  New  York  has  already  been 
noted.  It  came  about  merely  through  protection.  That  protection  was 
protection  in  fact,  not  the  false  "protection"  that  shoots  on  the  sly.  It 
is  the  irony  of  fate  that  full  protection  should  be  accorded  a  foreign  bird, 
in  order  that  it  may  multiply  and  possess  the  land,  while  the  same  kind 
of  protection  is  refused  the  native  bob  white,  and  it  is  now  almost  a  dead 
species,  so  far  as  this  state  is  concerned. 

In  looking  about  for  grievances  against  the  ring-necked  and  English 
pheasant,  some  persons  ha^'e  claimed  that  in  winter  these  birds  are 
"budders,"  which  means  that  they  harmfully  strip  trees  and  bushes  of 
the  buds  that  those  bushes  will  surely  need  in  their  spring  opening.     On 


32(i  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

that  point  Dr.  Joseph  Kalbfus,  Secretary  of  the  Pennsylvania  Game 
Commission,  sent  out  a  circular  letter  of  inquiry,  in  response  to  which 
he  received  many  statements.  With  but  one  exception,  all  the  testimony 
received  was  to  the  effect  that  pheasants  are  not  bud-eaters,  and  that 
generally  the  charge  is  unfounded. 

The  introduction  of  old-world  pheasants,  and  the  attempted  intro- 
duction of  the  Hungarian  partridge,  are  efforts  designed  first  of  all  to 
furnish  sportsmen  something  to  shoot,  and  incidentally  to  provide  a  new 
food  supply  for  the  table.  The  people  of  this  country  are  not  starving, 
nor  are  they  even  very  hungry  for  the  meat  of  strange  birds;  but  as  a 
food -producer,  the  pheasant  is  all  right. 

It  disgusts  me  to  the  core,  however,  to  see  states  that  wantonly  and 
wickedly,  through  sheer  apathy  and  lack  of  business  enterprise,  have 
allowed  the  quail,  the  heath  hen,  the  pinnated  grouse  and  the  ruffed 
grouse  to  become  almost  exterminated  by  extravagant  and  foolish 
shooters,  now  putting  forth  wonderfully  diligent  efforts  and  spending 
money  without  end,  in  introducing /omgw  species!  Many  men  actually 
take  the  ground  that  our  game  "can't  live"  in  its  own  country  any 
longer ;  but  only  the  ignorant  and  the  unthinking  will  say  so !  Give  our 
game  birds  decent,  sensible,  actual  protection,  stop  their  being  slaughtered 
far  faster  than  they  breed,  and  they  will  live  anywhere  in  their  own  native 
haunts!  But  where  is  there  one  species  of  upland  game  bird  in  America 
that  has  been  sensibly  and  adequately  protected?  From  Portland, 
Maine,  to  Portland,  Oregon  there  is  not  one, — not  a  single  locality  in  which 
protection  from  shooting  has  been  sensible,  or  just,  or  adequate. 

We  have  universally  given  our  American  upland  game  birds  an 
unfair  deal,  and  now  we  are  adding  insult  to  slaughter  by  bringing  in 
foreign  game  birds  to  replace  them— because  our  birds  "can't  live" 
before  five  million  shot-guns! 

Our  American  game  birds  CAN  live,  anywhere  in  the  haunts  where 
nature  placed  them  that  are  not  to-day  actually  occupied  by  cities  and 
towns!  Give  me  the  making  of  the  laws,  and  I  will  make  the  prairie 
chicken  and  quail  as  numerous  throughout  the  northern  states  east  of 
the  Great  Plains  as  domestic  chickens  are  outside  the  regular  poultry 
farms.  There  is  only  one  reason  why  there  are  not  ten  million  quail 
in  the  state  of  New  York  to-day, — one  for  each  human  inhabitant, — and 
that  reason  is  the  infernal  greed  and  selfishness  of  the  men  who  have 
almost  exterminated  our  quail  by  over-shooting.  Don't  talk  to  me  about 
the  ' '  hard  winters ' '  killing  off  our  quail !  It  is  the  hard  cheek  of  the  men 
who  shoot  them  when  they  ought  to  let  them  alone. 

The  State  of  Iowa  coiild  support  500,000  prairie  chickens  and  never 
miss  the  waste  grain  that  they  would  glean  in  the  fields;  but  now  the 
prairie  chicken  is  practically  extinct  in  Iowa,  only  a  few  scattered  speci- 
mens remaining  as  '  last  survivors "  in  some  of  the  northern  counties. 
The  migration  of  those  birds  that  unexpectedly  came  down  from  the 
north  last  winter  was  like  the  fall  of  a  meteor, — only  the  birds  promptly 
faded  away  again.     Why  should  New  York,  New  Jersey  and  Massachu^ 


BENEFICIAL    INTRODUCED    SPECIES  327 

setts  exterminate  the  heath  hen  and  coddle  the  rinj^-neeked  pheasant 
and  the  Hungarian  partridge? 

The  introduction  of  the  old-world  pheasants  interests  me  very  little. 
Every  one  that  I  see  is  a  painful  reminder  of  our  slaughtered  quail  and 
grouse,^ — the  birds  that  never  have  had  a  square  deal  from  the  American 
people!  Thus  far  the  introduction  of  the  Hungarian  partridge  has  not 
been  successful,  anywhere.  Connecticut,  Missouri,  New  Jersey  and  I 
think  other  states  have  tried  this,  and  failed.  The  failure  of  that 
species  brings  no  sorrow  to  me.  I  prefer  our  own  game  birds;  and  if  the 
American  people  will  not  conserve  those  properly  and  decently  they 
deserve  to  have  no  game  birds. 

The  European  Red  Deer  in  New  Zealand. — Occasionally  a  game- 
less  land  makes  a  ten-strike  by  introducing  a  foreign  game  animal  that 
does  no  harm,  and  becomes  of  great  value.  The  greatest  success  ever 
made  in  the  transplantation  of  game  animals  has  been  in  New  Zealand. 

Originally,  New  Zealand  possessed  no  large  animals,  and  no  "big- 
game."  When  Nature  passed  around  the  deer,  antelopes,  sheep,  goats, 
wild  cattle  and  bears,  New  Zealand  failed  to  receive  her  share.  For 
centuries  her  splendid  forests,  her  grand  mountains  and  picturesque 
valleys  remained  untenanted  by  big  game. 

In  1864,  the  Prince  Consort  of  England  caused  seven  head  of  European 
red  deer  to  be  taken  from  the  royal  park  at  Windsor,  and  sent  to  Christ- 
church,  New  Zealand.  Only  three  of  the  animals  survived  the  long 
voyage ;  a  buck  and  two  does.  For  several  weeks  the  two  were  kept  in  a 
barn  in  Christchurch,  where  they  served  no  good  purpose,  and  were  no^ 
likely  to  live  long  or  be  happy.  Finally  some  one  said,  "Let's  set  them 
free  in  the  mountains!" 

The  idea  was  adopted.  The  three  animals  were  hauled  an  uncertain 
number  of  miles  into  the  interior  mountains  and  set  free. 

They  promptly  settled  down  in  their  new  home.  They  began  to 
breed,  and  now  on  the  North  Island  there  are  probably  five  thousand 
European  red  deer,  every  one  of  which  has  descended  directly  from  the 
famous  three !    And  here  is  the  strangest  part  of  the  story : 

The  red  deer  of  the  North  Island  represent  the  greatest  case  of  in- 
and-in  breeding  of  wild  animals  on  record.  Accordmg  to  the  experience 
of  the  world  in  the  breeding  of  domestic  cattle  {not  horses),  we  should 
expect  physical  deterioration,  the  development  of  diseases,  and  disaster. 
On  the  contrary,  the  usual  evil  results  of  in-breeding  in  domestic  cattle 
have  been  totally  absen'. .  The  red  deer  of  New  Zealand  are  to-day  physically 
larger  and  more  robust  animals,  with  longer  and  heavier  antlers,  and  longer 
hair,  than  any  of  the  red  deer  of  Europe  vest  of  Germany! 

Red  deer  have  been  introduced  practically  all  over  New  Zealand,  and 
the  total  number  now  in  the  Islands  must  be  somewhere  near  fortv 
thousand.  The  sportsmen  of  that  country  have  grand  sport,  and  take 
many  splendid  trophies.  That  transplantation  has  been  a  very  great 
success.     Incidentally,  the  case  of  the  in-bred  deer  of  the  North  Island, 


328  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

taken  along  with  other  cases  of  which  we  know,  estabhshes  a  new  and 
important  principle  in  evolution.     It  is  this : 

When  healthy  wild  animals  are  established  in  a  state  of  nature,  either 
absolutely  free,  or  confined  in  preserves  so  large  that  they  roam  at  will,  seek 
the  food  of  nature  and  take  care  of  themselves,  in-and-in  breeding  produces 
no  ill  effects,  and  ceases  to  be  a  factor.  The  animals  develop  in  physical 
perfection  according  to  the  climate  and  their  food  supply;  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  new  blood  is  not  necessary. 

The  Fallow  Deer  on  the  Island  of  Lambay. — In  the  Irish  vSea, 
a  few  miles  from  the  southeast  coast  of  Ireland,  is  the  Island  of  Lambay, 
owned  by  Cecil  Baring,  Esq.  The  island  is  precisely  one  square  mile  in 
area,  and  some  of  its  sea  frontage  terminates  in  perpendicular  cliffs. 
In  many  ways  the  island  is  of  unusual  interest  to  zoologists,  and  its  fauna 
has  been  well  set  forth  by  Mr.  Baring. 

In  the  year  1892  three  fallow  deer  (Dama  vtilgaris)  a  buck  and  two 
does,  were  transplanted  from  a  park  on  the  Irish  mainland  to  Lambay, 
and  there  set  free.  From  that  slender  stock  has  sprung  a  large  herd, 
which,  but  for  the  many  deer  that  have  been  purposely  shot,  and  the  really 
considerable  number  that  have  been  killed  by  going  over  the  cliffs  in 
stormy  weather,  the  progeny  of  the  original  three  would  to-day  number 
several  hundred  head.  No  new  blood  has  been  introduced,  and  no  deer 
have  died  of  disease.  Even  counting  out  the  losses  by  the  rifle  and  by 
accidental  death,  the  herd  to-day  numbers  more  than  one  hundred  head. 

Mr.  Baring  declares  that  neither  he  nor  his  gamekeeper  have  ever 
been  able  to  discover  any  deterioration  in  the  deer  of  Lambay,  either  in 
size,  weight,  size  of  antlers,  fertility  or  general  physical  stamina.  The 
deterioration  through  disease,  especially  tuberculosis,  that  always  is 
dreaded  and  often  observed  in  closely  in-bred  domestic  cattle,  has  been 
totally  absent. 

In  looking  about  for  wild  species  that  have  been  transplanted,  and 
that  have  thriven  and  become  beneficial  to  man,  there  seems  to  be  mighty 
little  game  in  sight !  The  vast  majority  belong  in  the  next  chapter.  We 
will  venture  to  mention  the  bob  white  quail  that  were  introduced  into 
Utah  in  1871,  into  Idaho  in  1875,  and  the  California  valley  quail  in  Wash- 
ington in  1857.  Wherever  these  efforts  have  succeeded,  the  results  have 
been  beneficial  to  man. 

In  1879  a  well-organized  effort  was  made  to  introduce  European 
quail  into  several  of  the  New  England  and  Middle  States, — to  take  the 
place  of  the  bob  white,  we  may  suppose, — the  bird  that  "can't  stand  the 
winters!"  About  three  thousand  birds  were  distributed  and  set  free, — 
and  went  down  and  out,  just  as  might  have  been  expected.  During  the 
past  twenty  years  it  is  safe  to  say  that  not  less  than  $5500,000  have  been 
expended  in  the  northern  states,  and  particularly  in  the  northeastern 
states,  in  importing  live  quail  from  Kansas,  the  Indian  Territory,  Okla- 
homa, Texas,  the  Carolinas  and  other  southern  states,  for  restocking 
areas  from  which  the  northern  bob  white  had  been  exterminated  by 
foolish  over-shooting !    I  think  that  fully  nine-tenths  of  these  efforts  have 


BENEFICIAL   INTRODUCED   SPECIES  329 

ended  in  total  failure.  The  quail  could  not  survive  in  tneir  strange 
environinent.  I  cannot  recall  a  single  instance  in  which  restocking 
northern  covers  with  southern  quail  has  been  a  success. 

These  is  no  royal  road  to  the  restoration  of  an  exterminated  bird 
species.  Where  the  native  seed  still  exists,  by  long  labor  and  travail, 
thorough  protection  and  a  mighty  long  close  season,  it  can  be  encouraged 
to  breed  back  and  return;  but  it  is  an  evolution  that  can  not  be  hurried 
in  the  least.    Protect  Nature,  and  leave  the  rest  to  her. 

With  mammals,  the  case  is  different.  It  is  possible  to  restock  depleted 
areas,  provided  Time  is  recognized  as  a  dominant  factor.  I  can  cite  two 
interesting  cases  by  way  of  illustration,  but  this  subject  will  form  an- 
other chapter. 

In  the  transplantation  of  fishes,  conditions  are  widely  different,  and 
many  notable  successes  have  been  achieved. 

One  of  the  greatest  hits  ever  made  by  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Fisheries  in  the 
planting  of  fish  in  new  locahties  was  the  introduction  of  the  striped  bass  or  rock-fish 
{RoccHS  lineatus)  of  our  Atlantic  coast,  into  the  coast  waters  of  California.  In  1879, 
135  live  fish  were  deposited  in  Karquines  Strait,  at  Martinez,  and  in  1882, 300  more  were 
planted  in  Suisun  Bay,  near  the  first  locality  chosen. 

Twelve  years  after  the  first  planting  in  San  Francisco  Bay,  the  markets  of  San  Fran- 
cisco handled  149,997  pounds  of  striped  bass.  At  that  time  the  average  weight  for  a 
whole  year  was  eleven  pounds,  and  the  average  price  was  ten  cents  per  pound.  Fish 
weighing  as  high  as  forty-nine  pounds  have  been  taken,  and  there  are  reasons  for  the 
belief  that  eventually  the  fish  of  California  will  attain  as  great  weight  as  those  of  the 
Atlantic  and  the  Gulf. 

The  San  Franisco  markets  now  sell,  annually,  about  one  and  one  half  million  pounds 
of  striped  bass.  This  fish  has  taken  its  place  among  anglers  as  one  of  the  game  fishes 
of  the  California  coast,  and  affords  fine  sport.  Strange  to  say,  however,  it  has  not  yet 
spread  beyond  the  shores  of  California. 

Regarding  this  species,  the  records  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Fisheries  are  of 
interest.  In  1897,  the  California  markets  handled  2,949,642  pounds,  worth  $225,527.— 
(American  Natural  History.) 

Nowhere  else  in  the  world,  we  venture  to  say,  were  such  extensive, 
costly  and  persistent  efforts  put  forth  in  the  transplantation  of  any  wild 
foreign  species  as  the  old  U.  S.  Fish  Commission,  under  Prof.  Spencer  F. 
Baird,  put  forth  in  the  introduction  of  the  German  carp  into  the  fresh 
water  ponds,  lakes  and  rivers  of  the  United  States.  It  was  held  that 
because  the  carp  could  live  and  thrive  in  waters  bottomed  with  mud, 
that  species  would  be  a  boon  to  all  inland  regions  where  bodies  of  water, 
or  streams,  were  scarce  and  dear.  Although  the  carp  is  not  the  best  fish 
in  the  world  for  the  table,  it  seemed  that  the  dwellers  in  the  prairie  and 
great  plains  regions  would  find  it  far  better  than  bullheads,  or  no  fish  at 
all, — which  are  about  the  same  thing. 

By  means  of  special  fish  cars,  sent  literally  all  over  the  United  States, 
at  a  great  total  expense,  live  carp,  hatched  in  the  ponds  near  the  Wash- 
ington Monument  were  distributed  to  all  applicants.  The  German  carp 
spread  far  and  wide;  but  to-day  I  think  the  fish  has  about  as  many 
enemies  as  friends.  In  some  places,  strong  objections  have  been  filed  to 
the  manner  in  which  carp  stir  up  the  mud  at  the  bottom  of  ponds  and 
small  lakes,  greatly  to  the  detriment  of  all  the  native  fishes  found  therein. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 
INTRODUCED  SPECIES  THAT  HAVE  BECOME  PESTS 

The  man  who  successfully  transplants  or  "introduces"  into  a  new 
habitat  any  persistent  species  of  living  thing,  assumes  a  very  grave 
responsibility.  Every  introduced  species  is  doubtful  gravel  until  panned 
out.  The  enormous  losses  that  have  been  inflicted  upon  the  world  through 
the  perpetuation  of  follies  with  wild  vertebrates  and  insects  would,  if 
added  together,  be  enough  to  purchase  a  principality.  The  most  aggra- 
vating feature  of  these  follies  in  transplantation  is  that  never  yet  have 
they  been  made  severely  punishable.  We  are  just  as  careless  and  easy- 
going on  this  point  as  we  were  about  the  government  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park  in  the  days  when  Howell  and  other  poachers  destroyed  our  first 
national  bison  herd,  and  when  caught  red-handed — as  Howell  was, 
skinning  seven  Park  bison  cows, — could  not  he  punished  j or  it,  because  there 
was  no  penalty  prescribed  by  any  Ian. 

To-day,  there  is  a  way  in  which  any  revengeful  person  could  inflict 
enormous  damage  on  the  entire  South,  at  no  cost  to  himself,  involve 
those  states  in  enormous  losses  and  the  expenditure  of  vast  sums  of  money, 
yet  go  absolutely  unpunished! 

The  Gypsy  Moth  is  a  case  in  point.  This  winged  calamity  was  im- 
ported at  Maiden,  Massachusetts,  near  Boston,  by  a  French  entomologist, 
Mr.  Leopold  Trouvelot,  in  1868  or  '69.  History  records  the  fact  that  the 
man  of  science  did  not  purposely  set  free  the  pest.  He  was  endeavorine 
with  live  specimens  to  find  a  moth  that  would  produce  a  cocoon  of  com- 
mercial value  to  America;  and  a  sudden  gust  of  wind  blew  out  of  his  study, 
through  an  open  window,  his  living  and  breeding  specimens  of  the  gypsy 
moth.  The  moth  itself  is  not  bad  to  look  at,  but  its  larvae  is  a  great, 
overgrown  brute,  with  an  appetite  like  a  hog.  Immediately  Mr.  Trouve- 
lot sought  to  recover  his  specimens,  and  when  he  failed  to  find  them  all, 
like  a  man  of  real  honor,  he  notified  the  State  authorities  of  the  accident. 
Every  effort  was  made  to  recover  all  the  specimens,  bat  enough  escaped 
to  produce  progeny  that  soon  became  a  scourge  to  the  trees  of  Massachu- 
setts. The  method  of  the  big,  nasty-looking  mottled-brown  caterpillar 
was  very  simple.  It  devoured  the  entire  foliage  of  every  tree  that  grew 
in  its  sphere  of  influence. 

The  gypsy  moth  spread  with  alarming  rapidity  and  persistence.  In 
course  of  time  the  state  authorities  of  Massachuestts  were  forced  to 
begin  a  relentless  war  upon  it,  by  poisonous  sprays  and  by  fire.  It  was 
awful!  Up  to  this  date  (1912)  the  New  England  states  and  the  United 
States  Government  service  have  expended  in  fighting  this  pest  about 
$7,680,000! 


INTRODUCED    SPECIES   THAT  BECOME   PESTS  333 

The  spread  of  this  pest  has  been  retarded,  but  the  gypsy  moth  never 
will  be  wholly  stamped  out.  To-day  it  exists  in  Rhode  Island,  Connecti- 
cut and  New  Hampshire,  and  it  is  due  to  reach  New  York  at  an  early 
date.  It  is  steadily  spreading  in  three  directions  from  Boston,  its  original 
point  of  departure,  and  when  it  strikes  the  State  of  New  York,  we,  too, 
will  begin  to  pay  dearly  for  the  Trouvelot  experiment.  It  is  said  that 
General  S.  C.  Lawrence,  of  Medford,  Massachusetts,  has  spent  $75,000 
in  trying  to  protect  his  trees  from  the  ravages  of  this  scourge. 

The  Rabbit  Plague  in  Australia  and  New  Zeal.^nd. — The  rabbit 
curse  upon  Australia  and  New  Zealand  is  so  well  known  as  to  require 
Httle  comment.  In  this  case  the  introduction  was  deliberate.  In  the 
days  when  the  sheep  industr\  was  most  prosperous,  a  patriotic  gentleman 
conceived  the  idea  that  the  introduction  of  the  rabbit,  and  its  establish- 
ment as  a  wild  animal,  would  be  a  good  thing.  He  reasoned  that  it  would 
furnish  a  good  food  supplv,  that  it  would  furnish  sport,  and  being  unable 
to  harm  any  other  creature  of  flesh  and  blood  it  was  therefore  harmless. 
Accordingly,  three  pairs  of  rabbits  were  imported  and  set  free. 

In  a  short  time,  the  immense  number  of  rabbits  that  began  to  over- 
run the  country  furnished  food  for  reflection,  as  well  as  for  the  table. 
A  very  simple  calculation  brought  out  the  startling  information  that, 
under  perfectly  favorable  conditions,  a  single  pair  of  rabbits  could  in 
three  years'  time  produce  progeny  amounting  to  13,718,000  individuals. 
Ever  since  that  time,  in  discussing  the  rabbits  of  Australia  it  has  been 
necessary  to  speak  in  millions. 

"The  inhabitants  of  the  colony,"  says  Dr.  Richard  I.ydekker,  "soon 
found  that  the  rabbits  were  a  plague,  for  they  devoured  the  grass,  which 
was  needed  for  the  sheep,  the  bark  of  trees,  and  every  kind  of  fruit  and 
vegetable,  until  the  prospects  of  the  colony  became  a  very  serious  matter, 
and  ruin  seemed  inevitable.  In  New  South  Wales  upwards  of  15,000,000 
rabbits  skins  have  been  exported  in  a  single  year;  while  in  thirteen  years 
ending  with  1889  no  less  than  39,000,000  were  accounted  for  in  Victoria 
alone. 

"To  prevent  the  increase  of  these  rodents,  the  introduction  of  weasels, 
stoats,  mongooses,  etc.,  has  been  tried;  but  it  has  been  found  that  those 
carnivores  neglected  the  rabbits  and  took  to  feeding  on  poultry,  and  thus 
became  as  great  a  nuisance  as  the  animals  they  were  intended  to  destroy. 
The  attempt  to  kill  them  off  by  the  introduction  of  an  epidemic  di.sease 
has  also  failed.  In  order  to  protect  such  portions  of  the  country  as  are 
still  free  from  rabbits,  fences  of  wire  netting  have  been  erected;  one  of 
these  fences  erected  by  the  Government  of  Victoria  extending  for  a  dis- 
tance of  upwards  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  geograj^hical  miles.  In  New 
Zealand,  where  the  rabbit  has  been  introduced  little  more  than  twenty 
years,  its  increase  has  been  so  enormous,  and  the  destruction  it  inflicts 
so  great,  that  in  some  districts  it  has  actually  been  a  question  whether 
the  colonists  should  not  vacate  the  country  rather  than  attempt  to  fight 
against  the  j^lague.  The  average  number  of  rabbit  skins  exported  from 
New  Zealand  is  now  twelve  millions." — (Royal  Natural  History.) 


332  OUR   VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

The  Fox  Pest  in  Australia. — And  now  unfortunate  Australia  has  a 
new  pest,  also  acquired  by  importation  of  an  alien  species.  It  is  the  Euro- 
pean fox  (Vulpes  vulpes).  The  only  redeeming  feature  about  this  fresh 
calamity  is  found  in  the  fact  that  the  species  was  not  deliberately  intro- 
duced into  Australia  for  the  benefit  of  the  local  fauna.  Mr.  O.  W.  Rosen- 
hain,  of  Melbourne,  informs  ine  (1912)  that  about  thirty  years  ago  the 
Hunt  Club  brought  to  Australia  about  twenty  foxes,  for  the  promotion 
of  the  noble  sport  of  fox  hunting.  In  some  untoward  manner,  the  most 
of  those  animals  escaped.  They  survived,  multiplied,  and  have  provided 
New  South  Wales,  Victoria  and  South  Australia  with  a  fox  pest  of  the 
first  rank. 

The  destruction  of  wild  bird  life  and  poultry  has  become  so  serious 
that  Australia  now  is  making  vigorous  efforts  to  exterminate  the  pest. 
The  govermnent  pays  ten  shillings  bounty  on  fox  scalps,  besides  which 
each  prime  fox  skin  is  worth  from  four  to  five  dollars.  It  is  hoped  that 
these  coinbined  values  will  eliminate  the  fox  pest. 

Regarding  foxes  in  Australia,  Mr.  W.  H.  D.  LeSouef  has  this  to  sa}'- 
in  his  extremely  interesting  and  valuable  book,  "Wild  Life  in  Australia," 
page  146: 

"We  found  that  foxes  were  '  unfortunately  plentiful  in  this  district, 
and  in  a  hollow  log  that  served  to  shelter  some  cubs  were  noticed  the 
remains  of  ducks,  fowls,  rabbits,  lambs,  bandicoots  and  snakes;  so  they 
evidently  vary  their  fare,  snakes  even  not  coming  amiss.  They  also 
sneak  on  wild  ducks  that  are  nesting  by  the  edge  of  the  water  among  the 
rushes  and  tussocky  grass,  and  catch  quail  also,  especially  sitting  birds. 
These  animals  are,  and  always  will  he,  a  great  source  of  trouble  in  the 
thickly  timbered  country  and  stony  ranges,  and  will  gradually,  like  the 
rabbit,  extend  all  over  Australia.  They  are  evidently  not  contented  with 
ground  game  only,  as  Mr.  A.  F.  Kelly,  of  Barwonleigh,  in  Victoria, 
states:  "When  riding  past  a  bull-oak  tree  about  twenty-five  feet  high, 
with  either  a  magpie's  or  crow's  nest  on  top,  I  noticed  the  nest  looked 
very  bulky,  and  had  something  red  in  it.  On  going  nearer  I  saw  a  large 
fox  coiled  up  in  it!" 

The  Mongoose. — Circumstances  alter  cases,  and  a  change  of  envi- 
ronment sometimes  works  marvelous  changes  in  the  character  of  an 
animal  species.  Now,  why  should  not  the  gray  Indian  mongoose  (form- 
erly called  the  ichneumon,  (Ilerpestes  griseus)  destroy  poultry  in  India, 
as  it  does  elsewhere?  There  is  poultry  in  ^^^snty  to  be  destroyed,  but 
"  Rikki-Tikki-Tavi "  elects  to  specialize  -;.  ...c  killing  of  rats,  and  cobras, 
and  other  snakes. 

In  his  own  sphere  of  influence, — India  and  the  orient, — the  mongoose 
is  a  fairly  decent  citizen,  and  he  fits  into  the  time-worn  econoiny  of  that 
region.  As  a  destroyer  of  the  thrice-anathema  domestic  rat,  he  has  no 
equal  in.  the  domain  of  flesh  and  blood.  His  temper  is  so  fierce  that  one 
"pet"  mongoose  has  been  known  to  kill  a  full  grown  male  giant  bustard, 
and  put  a  greyhound  to  flight. 

In  an  evil  moment  (1872)  Mr.  W.  B.  Espeut  conceived  the  idea  that 


INTRODUCED    SPECIES    THAT   BECOME   PESTS  333 

it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  introduce  mongooses  to  the  rats  of  Barbadoes 
and  Jamaica  that  were  pestering  the  cane-fields  to  an  annoying  extent. 
It  was  .done.  The  mongooses  attacked  the  rats,  cleaned  them  out,  mul- 
tiplied, and  then  looked  about  for  more  worlds  to  conquer,  snakes  and 
lizards  were  few;  but  they  cheerfully  killed  and  devoured  all  there  were. 
Then,  being  continuously  hungry,  they  attacked  the  wild  birds  and 
poultr}',  indiscriminately,  and  with  their  usual  vigor.  I  have  been  told 
that  in  Barbadoes  "they  cleaned  out  every  living  thing  that  they  could 
catch  and  kill,  and  then  they  attacked  the  sugar-cane."  The  last  count 
in  the  indictment  may  seem  hard  to  believe;  but  it  is  a  fact  that  the 
Indian  mongoose  often  resorts  to  fruit  and  vegetable  food. 

In  Jamaica,  at  the  end  of  the  rat-killing  period,  the  planters  joy- 
fully estimated  that  the  labors  of  Herpestes  had  saved  between  £500,000 
and  £750,000  to  the  industries  of  that  island.  That  was  before  the 
slaughter  of  wild  birds  and  poultry  began.  I  am  told  that  up  to  date  the 
damage  done  by  the  mongoose  far  exceeds  the  value  of  the  benefit  it  once 
conferred,  but  the  total  has  not  been  computed. 

Up  to  this  date,  the  mongoose  has  invaded  and  become  a  destructive 
pest  in  Barbadoes,  Jamaica,  Cuba,  St.  Vincent,  vSt.  Lucia,  Trinidad, 
Nevis,  Fiji  and  all  the  larger  islands  of  the  Hawaiian  group.  It  would 
require  many  pages  to  contain  a  full  account  of  each  introduction, 
awakening,  reckoning  of  damages  and  payment  of  bounties  for  destruc- 
tion that  the  fiendish  mongoose  has  wrought  out  wherever  it  has  been 
introduced.  The  progress  of  the  pest  is  everywhere  the  same, — sweeping 
destruction  of  rats,  snakes,  wild  birds,  small  mammals,  and  finally 
poultry  and  vegetables. 

Every  country  that  now  is  without  the  mongoo.se  will  do  well  to  shut 
and  guard  diligently  all  the  doors  by  which  it  might  be  introduced. 

Throughout  its  range  in  the  western  hemisphere,  the  inongoose  is  a 
pest;  and  the  Biological  Survey  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  has 
done  well  in  securing  the  enactment  of  a  law  peremptorily  prohibiting 
the  importation  of  any  animals  of  that  species  into  the  United  States  or 
any  of  its  colonies.  The  fierce  temper,  indomitable  courage  and  vaulting 
appetite  of  the  mongoose  would  make  its  actual  introduction  in  any  of 
the  warm  portions  of  the  United  States  a  horrible  calamity.  In  the 
southern  states,  and  all  along  the  Pacific  slope  clear  up  to  Seattle,  it  could 
live,  thrive  and  multiply;  and  the  slaughter  that  it  could  and  would 
inflict  upon  our  wild  birds  generally,  especialh  all  those  that  nest  and 
live  on  the  ground,  saying  nothing  of  the  slaughter  of  poultry,  would 
drive  the  American  people  crazy. 

Fancy  an  animal  with  the  murderous  ferocity  of  a  mink,  the  agility 
of  a  squirrel,  the  penetration  of  a  ferret  and  the  cunning  of  a  rat,  infesting 
the  thickets  and  barnyards  of  this  country.  The  mongoose  can  live 
wherever  a  rat  can  live,  provided  it  can  get  a  fair  amount  of  animal  food. 
Not  for  $1,000,000  could  any  one  of  the  southern  or  Pacific  states  afford 
to  have  a  pair  of  these  little  gray  fiends  imported  and  set  free.  If  such  a 
calamity  ever  occurs,  all  wheels  should  stop,  and  every  habitant  should 


334  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

turn  out  and  hunt  for  the  animals  until  they  are  found  and  pulverized. 
No  matter  if  it  should  require  a  thousand  men  and  $100,000,  find  them! 
If  not  found,  the  cost  to  the  state  will  soon  be  a  million  a  year,  with  no 
ending. 

In  spite  of  the  vigilance  of  our  custom  house  officers,  every  now  and 
then  a  Hindoo  from  some  foreign  vessel  sneaks  into  the  country  with  a 
pet  mongoose  (and  they  do  make  great  pets!)  inside  his  shirt,  or  in  the 
bottom  of  a  bag  of  clothing.  Of  course,  whenever  the  Department  of 
Agriculture  discovers  any  of  these  surreptitious  animals,  they  are  at 
once  confiscated,  and  either  killed  or  sent  to  a  public  zoological  park  for 
safe-keeping.  In  New  York,  the  director  of  the  Zoological  Park  is  so 
genuinely  concerned  about  the  possibility  of  the  escape  of  a  female  mon- 
goose that  he  has  issued  two  standing  orders :  All  live  mongooses  offered 
to  us  shall  at  once  be  purchased,  and  every  female  animal  shall  im- 
mediately be  chloroformed. 

If  Herpestes  griseus  ever  breaks  loose  in  the  United  States,  the  crime 
shall  not  justly  be  chargeable  to  us. 

The  English  Sparrow. — In  the  United  States,  the  English  sparrow 
is  a  national  sorrow,  almost  too  great  to  be  endured.  It  is  a  bird  of  plain 
plumage,  low  tastes,  impudent  disposition  and  persistent  fertility.  Con- 
tinually does  it  crowd  out  its  betters,  or  pugnaciously  drive  them  away, 
and  except  on  very  rare  occasions  it  eats  neither  insects  nor  weed  seeds. 
It  has  no  song,  and  in  habits  it  is  a  bird  of  the  street  and  the  gutter.  _  There 
is  not  one  good  reason  why  it  should  exist  in  this  country.  If  it  were 
out  of  the  way,  our  native  insect-eaters  of  song  and  beauty  could  return 
to  our  lawns  and  orchards.  The  English  sparrow  is  a  nuisance  and  a  pest, 
and  if  it  could  be  returned  to  the  land  of  its  nativity  we  would  gain  much. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

NATIONAL  AND  STATE  GAME  PRESERVES,  AND  BIRD 

REFUGES 

Out  West,  there  is  said  to  be  a  "feeling"  that  game  and  forest  con- 
servation has  "gone  far  enough."  In  Montana,  particularly,  the  Na- 
tional Wool-Growers'  Association  has  for  some  time  been  firmly  con- 
vinced that  "the  time  has  come  to  call  a  halt."  Oh,  yes!  A  halt  on  the 
conservation  of  game  and  forests;  but  not  on  the  free  grazing  of  sheep 
on  the  public  domain.  No,  not  even  while  those  same  sheep  are  busily 
growing  wool  that  is  so  fearfully  and  wonderfully  conserved  by  a  sky- 
high  tariff  that  the  truly  poor  Americans  are  forced  to  wear  garments 
made  of  shoddy  because  they  cannot  afford  to  buy  clothing  made  of  wool ! 
(This  is  the  testimony  of  a  responsible  clothing  merchant,  in  1912.) 

We  can  readily  understand  the  new  hue  and  cry  against  conservation 
that  the  sheep  men  now  are  raising.  Of  course  they  are  against  all  new 
game  and  forest  reserves, — unless  the  woolly  hordes  are  given  the  right 
to  graze  in  them ! 

Many  men  of  the  Great  West, — the  West  beyond  the  Great  Plains, — 
are  afflicted  with  a  desire  to  do  as  they  please  with  the  natural  resources 
of  that  region.  That  is  the  great  curse  that  to-day  rests  upon  our  game. 
When  the  nearest  game  warden  is  50  miles  away,  and  big  game  is  only 
5  miles  away,  it  is  time  for  that  game  to  take  to  the  tall  timber. 

But  in  the  West,  and  East  and  South,  there  are  many  men  and  women 
who  believe  in  reasonable  conservation,  and  deplore  destruction.  We 
have  not  by  any  means  reached  the  point  where  we  can  think  of  stopping 
in  the  making  of  game  preserves,  or  forest  preserves.  Of  the  former,  we 
have  scarcely  begun  to  make.  The  majority  of  the  states  of  our  Union 
know  of  state  game  preserves  only  by  hearsay.  But  the  time  is  coming 
when  the  states  will  come  forward,  and  perfonn  the  serious  duty  that 
they  neglect  to-day. 

Let  the  statesmen  of  America  be  not  afraid  of  making  too  many  game 
preserves!  For  the  next  year,  one  per  day  would  be  none  too  many! 
Remember,  that  on  one  hand  we  have  the  Army  of  Destruction,  and  on 
the  other  the  expectant  mDlions  of  Posterity.  No  executor  or  trustee  ever 
erred  in  safeguarding  an  estate  too  carefully.  Fifty  years  hence,  if  your 
successors  and  mine  find  that  too  much  land  has  been  set  aside  for  the 
good  of  the  people,  they  can  mighty  easily  restore  any  surplus  to  the 
public  domain,  and  at  a  vastly  increased  valuation.  Give  Posterity  at 
least  one  chance  to  debate  the  question :  "Were  our  forefathers  too  liberal 
in  the  making  of  game  and  forest  reserves?" 


336  OUR     VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

We  can  always  carve  up  any  useless  surplus  of  the  public  domain,  and 
restore  it  to  commercial  uses;  but  none  of  the  men  of  to-day  will  live 
long  enough  to  see  so  strange  a  proceeding  carried  into  effect. 

The  game  preserves  of  the  United  States  government  are  so  small 
(with  the  exception  of  the  Yellowstone  and  Glacier  Parks) ,  that  very  few 
people  exer  hear  of  them,  and  fewer  still  know  of  them  in  detail.  It  seems 
to  be  quite  time  that  they  should  be  set  forth  categorically;  and  it  is 
most  earnestly  to  be  hoped  that  this  list  soon  will  be  doubled. 

The  Yellowstone  National  Park. — This  was  the  first  of  the 
national  parks  and  game  preserves  of  the  United  States.  Some  of  our 
game  preserves  are  not  exactly  national  parks,  but  this  is  both,  by  Act 
of  Congress. 

It  is  62  miles  long  from  north  to  south,  54  miles  wide  and  contains  a. 
total  area  of  3,348  square  miles,  or  2,142,720  acres.  Its  western  border 
lies  in  Idaho,  and  along  its  northern  border  a  narrow  strip  lies  in  Montana. 
It  is  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  and  it  is 
guarded  by  a  detachment  of  cavalry  from  the  United  States  Army.  The 
Superintendent  is  now  a  commissioned  ofhcer  of  the  United  States  Army. 
The  business  of  protecting  the  game  is  performed  partly  by  four  scouts, 
who  are  civilians  specially  engaged  for  that  purpose,  but  the  number  has 
always  been  totally  inadequate  to  the  work  to  be  performed. 

At  least  one-half  of  the  public  interest  attaching  to  the  Yellowstone 
Park  is  based  upon  its  wild  animals.  There,  the  average  visitor  sees, 
for  the  first  time,  wild  mountain  sheep,  antelope,  mule  deer,  elk,  grizzly 
bears  and  white  pelicans,  roaming  free.  But  for  the  tragedy  of  the  Park 
bison  herd, — slaughtered  by  poachers  from  1890  to  1893,  from  300  head 
down  to  30 — visitors  would  see  wild  bison  also;  but  now  the  few  wild 
bison  remaining  keep  as  far  as  possible  from  the  routes  of  tourist  travel. 
The  bison  were  slaughtered  through  an  inadequate  protective  force,  and 
(then)  utterly  inadequate  laws. 

Lieut. -Col.  L.  M.  Brett,  U.S.A.,  Superintendent  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park  advises  me  (July  29,  1912)  that  the  wild  big  game  in  the  Yellow- 
stone Park  in  the  summer  of  1912,  is  as  shown  below,  based  on  actual 
counts  and  estimates  of  the  Park  scouts,  and  particularly  Scout  McBride. 
"The  estimates  of  buffalo,  elk,  antelope,  deer,  sheep  and  bear  are  based 
on  actual  counts,  or  very  close  observations,  and  are  pretty  nearly  cor- 
rect." (Col.  Brett). 

Wild  Buffalo 49 

Moose 550 

Elk  (in  summer) 35,000 

Antelope 500 

Mountain  Sheep 210 

Mule  Deer 400 

White-tailed  Deer 100    . 

Grizzly  Bears 50 

Black  Bears 100 


NATIONAL   AND    STATE  PRESERVES  AND   REFUGES  337 

Pumas    100 

Gray  Wolves none 

Coyotes 400 

Pelicans 1,000 

The  actual  count  of  49  wild  bison  in  the  Park,  10  of  which  are  calves 
of  1912,  will  be  to  all  friends  of  the  bison  a  dehghtful  surprise.  Here- 
tofore the  little  band  had  seemed  to  be  stationary,  which  if  true  would 
soon  mean  a  decline. 

The  history  of  the  wild  game  of  the  Yellowstone  Park  is  blackened  by 
two  occurrences,  and  one  existing  fact.  The  fact  is :  the  town  of  Gardiner 
is  situated  on  the  northern  boundary  of  the  Park,  in  the  State  of  Montana. 
In  Gardiner  there  are  a  number  of  men,  armed  with  rifles,  who  toward 
game  have  the  gray-wolf  quality  of  mercy. 

The  first  stain  is  the  massacre  of  the  270  wild  bison  for  their  heads  and 
robes,  already  noted.  The  second  blot  is  the  equally  savage  slaughter 
in  the  early  winter  of  1911,  by  some  of  the  people  of  Gardiner,  reinforced 
by  so-called  sportsmen  from  other  parts  of  the  state,  of  all  the  park  elk 
they  could  kill, — bulls,  cows  and  calves, — because  a  large  band  wandered 
across  the  line  into  the  shambles  of  Gardiner,  on  Buffalo  Flats. 

If  the  people  of  Gardiner  can  not  refrain  from  slaughtering  the  game 
of  the  Park — the  very  animals  annually  seen  by  20,000  visitors  to  the 
Park, — then  it  is  time  for  the  American  people  to  summon  the  town  of 
Gardiner  before  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  to  show  cause  why  the  town 
should  not  be  wiped  off  the  map. 

The  35,000  elk  that  summer  in  the  Park  are  compelled  in  winter  to 
migrate  to  lower  altitudes  in  order  to  find  grass  that  is  not  under  two  feet 
of  snow.  In  the  winter  of  1911-12,  possibly  5,000  went  south,  into 
Jackson  Hole,  and  3,000  went  northward  into  Montana.  The  sheep- 
grazing  north  of  the  Park,  and  the  general  settlement  by  ranchmen  of 
Jackson  Hole,  have  deprived  the  elk  herds  of  those  regions  of  their 
natural  food.  For  several  years  past,  up  to  and  including  the  winter 
of  1910-11,  some  thousands  of  weak  and  immature  elk  have  perished  in 
the  Jackson  Hole  country,  from  starvation  and  exposure.  The  ranchmen 
of  that  region  have  had  terrible  times, — in  witnessing  the  sufferings  of 
thousands  of  elk  tamed  by  hunger,  and  begging  in  piteous  dumb  show 
for  the  small  and  all-too-few  haystacks  of  the  ranchmen. 

The  people  of  Jackson  Hole,  headed  by  S.  N.  Leek,  the  famous  pho- 
tographer and  lecturer  on  those  elk  herds,  have  done  all  that  they  could 
do  in  the  premises.  The  spirit  manifested  by  them  has  been  the  exact 
reverse  of  that  manifested  in  Gardiner.  To  their  everlasting  credit,  they 
have  kept  domestic  sheep  out  of  the  Jackson  Valley, — by  giving  the 
owners  of  invading  herds  "hours"  in  which  to  get  their  sheep  "all  out, 
and  over  the  western  range." 

In  1909,  the  State  of  Wyoming  spent  in  feeding  starving  elk $.5,000 

In  1911,  the  State  of  Wyoming  spent  in  feeding  starving  elk ."),000 


3;^  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

In  1911,    the  U.  S.  Government  appropriated  for  feeding  starving  elk, 

and  exporting  elk $20,000 

In  1912,  the  Camp-Fire  Club  of  Detroit  gave,  for  feeding  hungry  elk.  .  .  '      100 

In  1910-11,  about  3,000  elk  perished  in  Jackson  Hole 

In  1911-12,  Mr.  Leek's  photographs  of  the  elk  herds  showed  an  alarming  absence 
of  mature  bulls,  indicating  that  now  the  most  of  the  breeding  is  done  by- 
immature  males.    This  means  the  sure  deterioration  of  the  species. 

The  prompt  manner  in  which  Congress  responded  in  the  late  winter 
of  191 1  to  a  distress  call  in  behalf  of  the  starving  elk,  is  beyond  all  ordinary 
terms  of  praise.  It  was  magnificent.  In  fear  and  trembling,  Congress 
was  asked,  through  Senator  Lodge,  to  appropriate  $5,000.  Congress  and 
Senator  Lodge  made  it  $20,000;  and  for  the  first  time  the  legislature  of 
Wyoming  appealed  for  national  aid  to  save  the  joint-stock  herds  of  Wvo- 
ming  and  the  Yellowstone  Park. 

Glacier  Park,  Montana. — In  the  wild  and  picturesque  mountains 
of  northwestern  Montana,  covering  both  sides  of  the  great  Continental 
Divide,  there  is  a  region  that  has  been  splendidly  furnished  by  the  hand 
of  Nature.  It  is  a  bewildering  maze  of  thundering  peaks,  plunging 
valleys,  evergreen  forests,  glistening  glaciers,  mirror  lakes  and  roaring 
mountain  streams.  Its  leading  citizens  are  white  mountain  goats, 
mountain  sheep,  moose,  mule  deer  and  white-tailed  deer,  and  among 
those  present  are  black  and  grizzly  bears  galore. 

Commercially,  the  1,400  square  miles  of  Glacier  Park,  even  with  its 
60  glaciers  and  260  lakes,  are  worth  exactly  the  price  of  its  big  trees, 
and  not  a  penny  more.  For  mining,  agriculture,  horticulture  and  stock- 
raising,  it  is  a  cipher.  As  a  transcendant  pleasure  ground  and  recreation 
wilderness  for  ninety  millions  of  people,  it  is  worth  ninety  millions  of 
dollars,  and  not  a  penny  less.  It  is  a  pleasure  park  of  which  the  greatest 
of  the  nations  of  the  earth, — whichever  that  may  be, — might  well  be 
overbearingly  proud;  and  its  accessibility  is  almost  unbelievable  until 
seen. 

This  park  is  bounded  on  the  south  by  the  Great  Northern  Railway, 
on  the  east  by  the  Blackfoot  Indian  Reservation,  on  the  north  by  Alberta 
and  British  Columbia,  and  on  the  west  by  West  Fork  of  the  Flathead 
River.  Horizontally,  it  contains  1,400  square  miles;  but  as  the  goat 
climbs,  its  area  is  at  least  double  that.  Its  valleys  are  filled  and  its  lakes 
are  encircled  by  grand  forests  of  Douglas  fir,  hemlock,  spruce,  white  pine, 
cedar  and  larch ;  and  if  ever  they  are  destroyed  by  fire,  it  will  be  a  national 
calamity,  a  century  long. 

So  long  as  the  American  people  keep  out  of  the  poorhouse,  let  there  be  no 
lumber-cutting  vandalism  in  that  park,  destroying  the  beauty  of  every  acre 
of  forest  that  is  touched  by  axe  or  saw.  The  greatest  beauty  of  those  forests 
is  the  forest  floor,  which  lumbering  operations  would  utterly  destroy. 

Never  mind  if  there  is  "ripe  timber"  there!  The  American  nation  is 
not  suffering  for  the  dollars  that  those  lovely  forest  giants  would  fetch 
by  board  measure.  What  if  a  tree  does  fall  now  and  then  from  old  age! 
We  can  stand  the  expense.  If  Posterity  a  hundred  years  hence  finds  it- 
.self  lumberless,  and  wishes  to  use  those  trees,  then  let  Posterity  pay  the 


UNITED  STATES  NATIONAL  GAME  PRESERVES 
and  Five  Pacific  Bird  Refuges 


340  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

price,  and  take  them.  We  are  not  suffering  for  them;  and  our  duty  is  to 
save  them  inviolate,  and  hand  them  down  as  a  heritage  that  we  proudly 
transmit  unimpaired. 

The  friends  of  wild  life  are  particularly  interested  in  Glacier  Park  as 
a  national  game  reservoir,  and  refuge  for  wild  life.  On  the  north,  in 
Alberta,  it  is  soon  to  be  extended  by  Waterton  Lakes  Park. 

When  I  visited  Glacier  Park,  in  1909,  with  Frederick  H.  Kennard  and 
Charles  H.  Conrad,  I  procured  from  three  intelligent  guides  their  best 
estimates  of  the  amount  of  big  game  then  in  the  Park.  The  guides 
were  Thomas  H.  Scott,  Josiah  Rogers  and  Walter  S.  Gibb.* 

They  compared  notes,  and  finally  agreed  upon  these  figures: 

Elk 200 

Moose 2,500 

Mountain  Sheep 700 

Mountain  Goats 10,500 

Grizzly  Bears • 1,000  to  1,500 

Black  Bears 2,500  to  3,000 

As  previously  stated,  one  of  the  surprising  features  of  this  new  wonder 
land  is  its  accessibility.  The  Great  Northern  lands  you  at  Belton.  A 
ride  of  three  miles  over  a  good  road  through  a  beautiful  forest  brings  you 
to  the  foot  of  Lake  McDonald,  and  in  one  hour  more  by  boat  you  are  at 
the  hotels  at  the  head  of  the  lake.  At  that  point  you  are  within  three 
hours'  horse-back  ride  of  Sperry  Glacier  and  the  marvelous  panorama  that 
unrolls  before  you  from  the  top  of  Lincoln  Peak.  At  the  foot  of  that 
Peak  we  saw  a  big,  wild  white  mountain  goat :  and  another  one  watched 
us  climb  up  to  the  Sperry  Glacier. 

Mt.  Olympus  National  Monument. — For  at  least  six  years  the 
advocates  of  the  preservation  of  American  wild  life  and  forests  vainly 
desired  that  the  grand  mountain  territory  around  Mount  Olympus,  in 
northwestern  Washington,  should  be  established  as  a  national  forest  and 
game  preserve.  In  addition  to  the  preservation  of  the  forests,  it  was 
greatly  desired  that  the  remnant  bands  of  Olympic  wapiti  (described  as 
Cervus  roosevelti)  should  be  perpetuated.  It  now  contains  1,975  speci- 
mens of  that  variety.  In  Congress,  two  determined  efforts  were  made  in 
behalf  of  the  region  referred  to,  but  both  were  defeated  by  the  enemies 
of  forests  and  wild  life. 

In  an  auspicious  moment,  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer,  Assistant  Chief  of  the 
Biological  Survey,  Department  of  Agriculture,  thought  of  a  law  under 
which  it  would  be  both  proper  and  right  to  bring  the  desired  preserve 
into  existence.  The  law  referred  to  expressly  clothes  the  President  of 
the  United  States  with  power  to  preserve  any  monumental  feature  of 
nature  which  it  clearly  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to  preserve  for  all  time 
from  the  hands  of  the  spoilers. 

With  the  enthusiastic  approval  and  assistance  of  Representative 
William  E.  Humphrey,  of  Seattle,  Dr.  Palmer  set  in  motion  the  machinery 

*See  Recreation  Magazine,  May,  1910,  p.  213 


NATIONAL    AND   STATE  PRESERVES  AND    REFUGES  341 

necessary  to  the  carrying  of  the  matter  before  the  President  in  proper 
form,  and  kept  it  going,  with  the  result  that  on  March  2,  1909,  President 
Roosevelt  affixed  his  signature  to  the  document  that  closed  the  circuit. 

Thus  was  created  the  Mount  Olympus  National  Monument,  pre- 
serving forever  608,640  acres  of  magnificent  mountains,  valleys,  glaciers, 
streams  and  forests,  and  all  the  wild  creatures  living  therein  and  thereon. 
The  people  of  the  state  of  Washington  have  good  reason  to  rejoice  in  the 
fact  that  their  most  highly-prized  scenic  wonderland,  and  the  last  sur- 
vivors of  the  wapiti  in  that  state,  are  now  preserved  for  all  coming  time. 
At  the  same  time,  we  congratulate  Dr.  Palmer  on  the  brilliant  success 
of  his  initiative. 

The  Superior  National  Game  and  Forest  Preserve. — The 
people  of  Minnesota  long  desired  that  a  certain  great  tract  of  wilderness 
in  the  extreme  northern  portion  of  that  state,  now  well  stocked  with 
moose  and  deer,  should  be  established  as  a  game  and  forest  preserve. 
Unfortunately,  however,  the  national  government  could  go  no  farther 
than  to  withdraw  the  lands  (and  waters)  from  entry,  and  declare  it  a 
forest  reserve.  At  the  right  moment,  some  bright  genius  proposed  that 
the  national  government  should  by  executive  order  create  a  ''forest 
reserve,"  and  then  that  the  legislature  of  Minnesota  should  pass  an  act 
providing  that  every  national  forest  of  that  state  should  also  be  regarded 
as  a  state  -game  preserve! 

Both  those  things  were  done, — almost  as  soon  as  said!  Mr.  Carlos 
Avery,  the  Executive  Agent  of  the  Board  of  Game  and  Fish  Commis- 
sioners of  Minnesota  is  entitled  to  great  credit  for  the  action  of  his  state, 
and  we  have  to  thank  Mr.  Gifford  Pinchot  and  President  Roosevelt  for 
the  executive  action  that  represented  the  first  half  of  the  effort. 

The  new  Superior  Preserve  is  valuable  as  a  game  and  forest  reserve, 
and  nothing  else.  It  is  a  wilderness  of  small  lakes,  marshes,  creeks,  hum- 
mocks of  land,  scrubby  timber,  and  practically  nothing  of  commercial 
value.  But  the  wilderness  contains  many  moose,  and  zoologically,  it  is 
for  all  practical  purposes  a  moose  preserve. 

In  it,  in  1908  Mr.  Avery  saw  fifty-one  moose  in  three  days,  Mr.  Ful- 
lerton  saw  183  in  nine  days,  and  Mr.  Fullerton  estimated  the  total 
number  of  moose  in  Minnesota  as  a  whole  at  10,000  head. 

In  area  it  contains  1,420,000  acres,  and  the  creation  of  this  great 
preserve  was  accomplished  on  April  13,  1909. 

The  Wichita  National  Game  Preserve. — In  the  Wichita  Moun- 
tains, of  southwestern  Oklahoma,  there  is  a  National  game  preserve 
containing  57,120  acres.  On  this  preserve  is  a  fenced  bison  range  and  a 
herd  of  thirty-nine  American  bison  which  owe  their  existence  to  the 
initiative  of  the  New  York  Zoological  Society.  On  March  25,  1905,  the 
Society  proposed  to  the  National  Government  the  founding  of  a  range 
and  herd,  on  a  basis  that  was  entirely  new.  To  the  Society  it  seemed 
desirable  that  for  the  encouragement  of  Congress  in  the  preservation  of 
species  that  are  threatened  with  extermination,  the  scientific  corporations 


342  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

of  America,  and  private  individuals  also,  should  do  something  more  than 
to  offer  advice  and  exhortations  to  the  government. 

Accordingly,  the  Zoological  Society  offered  to  present  to  the  Govern- 
ment, delivered  on  the  ground  in  Oklahoma,  a  herd  of  fifteen  pure-blood 
bison  as  the  nucleus  of  a  new  national  herd,  provided  Congress  would 
furnish  a  satisfactory  fenced  range,  and  maintain  the  herd.  The  offer 
was  at  once  accepted  by  Hon.  James  Wilson,  Secretary  of  Agriculture, 
and  the  Society  was  invited  to  propose  a  site  for  a  range.  The  Society 
sent  a  representative  to  the  Wichita  National  Forest  Reserve,  who 
recommended  a  range,  and  made  a  report  upon  it,  which  the  Society 
adopted. 

By  act  of  Congress  the  range  was  at  once  established  and  fenced.  Its 
area  is  twelve  square  miles  (9,760  acres).  In  October,  1908,  the  Zoological 
Society  took  from  its  herd  in  the  Zoological  Park  nine  female  and  six  male 
bison,  and  delivered  them  at  the  bison  range.  There  were  many  predic- 
tions that  all  those  bison  would  die  of  Texas  fever  within  one  year ;  but 
the  parties  most  interested  persisted  in  trying  conclusions  with  the  famous 
tick  of  Texas. 

Mr.  Frank  Rush  was  appointed  Warden  of  the  new  National  Bison 
Range,  and  his  management  has  been  so  successful  that  only  two  of  the 
bison  died  of  the  fever,  the  disease  has  been  stamped  out,  and  the  herd 
now  contains  thirty-nine  head.  Within  five  years  it  should  reach  the 
one-hundred  mark.  Elk,  deer  and  antelope  have  been  placed  in  the 
range,  and  all  save  the  antelope  are  doing  well.  The  Wichita  Bison  Range 
is  an  unqualified  success. 

The  Montana  National  Bison  Range. — The  opening  of  the 
Flathead  Indian  Reservation  to  settlement,  in  1909,  afforded  a  golden 
opportunity  to  locate  in  that  region  another  national  bison  herd.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  1908,  the  American  Bison  Society  formulated  a  plan  by 
which  the  establishment  of  such  a  range  and  herd  might  be  brought  about. 
That  plan  was  successfully  carried  into  effect,  in  1909  and  '10. 

The  Bison  Society  proposed  to  the  national  government  to  donate  a 
herd  of  at  least  twenty-five  bison,  provided  Congress  would  purchase  a 
range,  fence  it  and  maintain  the  herd.  The  offer  was  immediately 
accepted,  and  with  commendable  promptness  Congress  appropriated 
$40,000  with  which  to  purchase  the  range,  and  fence  it.  The  Bison 
Society  examined  various  sites,  and  finally  recommended  what  was 
regarded  as  an  ideal  location  situated  near  Ravalli,  Montana,  north  of 
jthe  Jocko  River  and  Northern  Pacific  Railway,  and  east  of  the  Flathead 
River.     The  nearest  stations  are  Ravalli  and  Dixon. 

The  area  of  the  range  is  about  twenty-nine  square  miles  (18,521 
acres)  and  for  the  purpose  that  it  is  to  serve  it  is  beautiful  and  perfect 
beyond  compare.    In  it  the  bison  herd  requires  no  winter  feeding  whatever. 

In  1910  the  Bison  Society  raised  by  subscription  a  fund  of  $10,526, 
and  with  it  purchased  37  very  perfect  pure-blood  bison  from  the  famous 
Conrad  herd  at  Kalispell,  22  of  which  were  females.  One  gift  bison  was 
added  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Charles  Goodnight,  two  were  presented  by  the 


NATIONAL    AND    STATE   PRESERVES   AND    REFUGES  :j4;i 

estate  of  Charles  Conrad,  and  three  were  presented  from  the  famous 
Corbin  herd,  at  Newport,  N.  H.,  by  the  Blue  Mountain  Forest  Association. 

Starting  with  that  nucleus  (of  43  head)  in  1910,  the  herd  has  already 
(1912)  increased  to  80  head.  The  herd  came  through  the  severe  win- 
ter of  1911-1912  without  having  been  fed  any  hay  whatever,  and  the 
founders  of  it  confidently  expect  to  live  to  see  it  increase  to  one  thousand 
head. 

The  Grand  Canyon  National  Game  Preserve  of  northern  Arizona, 
embraces  the  entire  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado  River,  for  a  meandering 
distance  of  101  miles,  and  adjacent  territory  to  an  extent  of  2,333  square 
miles  (1,492,928  acres).  Owing  to  certain  conditions,  natural  and  other- 
wise, it  is  not  the  finest  place  in  the  world  for  the  peaceful  increase  of 
wild  gaine.  The  Canyon  contains  a  few  mountain  sheep,  and  mule  deer, 
but  Buckskin  Mountain,  on  the  northwestern  side,  is  reeking  with  moun- 
tain lions  and  gray  wolves,  and  both  those  species  should  be  shot  out  of 
the  entire  Grand  Canyon  National  Forest.  It  was  on  Buckskin  and  the 
western  wall  of  the  Canyon  itself  that  "Buffalo"  Jones,  Mr.  Charles  vS. 
Bird,  and  their  party  caught  nine  live  mountain  lions,  in  1909. 

I  regret  to  say  that  "Buffalo  "  Jones's  catalo  experiment  on  the  Kaibab 
Plateau  seems  to  have  met  an  untimely  and  disappointing  fate.  For 
three  years  the  bison  and  domestic  cattle  crossed,  and  produced  a  number 
of  cataloes;  but  in  1911,  practically  the  whole  lot  was  wiped  off  the  earth 
by  cattle  rustlers !  Mr.  Jones  thinks  that  it  was  guerrillas  from  southern 
Utah  who  murdered  his  enterprise,  partly  for  the  reason  that  no  other 
persons  were  within  striking  distance  of  the  herd. 

Mount  Rainier  National  Park. — This  fine  forest  park  is  the  great 
summer  outing  ground  of  the  people  of  the  state  of  Washington.  Its 
area  is  324  square  miles,  and  as  its  name  implies  it  embraces  Mount 
Rainier.  Easily  accessible  from  Seattle  and  Tacoma,  and  fairly  well — 
though  not  adequately — provided  with  roads,  trails,  tent  camps,  hotels 
and  livery  transportation,  it  is  really  the  Yellowstone  Park  of  the  North- 
west. 

The  Yosemite  National  Park  in  California  is  so  well  known  that 
no  description  of  it  is  necessary.  Its  area  is  1,124  square  miles  (719.(522 
acres).  Its  great  value  lies  in  its  scenery,  but  along  with  that  it  is  a 
sanctuary  for  such  of  the  wild  mammals  and  birds  of  California  as  will 
not  wander  beyond  its  borders  to  the  certain  death  that  awaits  every- 
thing that  may  legally  be  killed  in  that  state. 

Crater  Lake  National  Park. — Like  all  the  National  Parks  of 
America  generally,  this  one  also  is  a  game  sanctuary.  It  is  situated  on 
the  summit  of  the  Cascade  Mountains  of  Oregon.  The  wonderful  Crater 
Lake  itself  is  62  miles  from  Klamath  Falls,  83  miles  from  Ashland, 
and  it  is  6  miles  long,  4  miles  wide  and  200  feet  deep.  This  National  Park 
was  created  by  Act  of  Congress  in  1902.  Its  area  is  249  square  miles 
(159,360  acres),  and  it  contains  Columbian  black-tailed  deer,  black  bear, 
the  silver-gray  squirrel,  and  many  birds,  chiefly  members  of  the  grouse 
family.     Owing  to  its  lofty  elevation,  there  are  few  ducks. 


344 


OUR  VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 


The  Sequoia  and  General  Grant  National  Parks  were  created 
for  the  special  purpose  of  preserving  the  famous  groves  of  "big  trees," 
{Sequoia  gigantea) .  The  former  is  in  Tiilare  County,  the  latter  in  Tulare 
and  Fresno  counties,  California,  on  the  western  slope  of  the  Sierra  Nevadas. 
The  area  of  Sequoia  Park  is  169,605  acres,  and  that  of  General  Grant 
Park  is  2,560  acres.  They  are  under  the  control  of  the  Interior  Depart- 
ment. These  Parks  are  important  bird  refuges,  and  Mr.  Walter  Fry, 
Forest  Ranger,  reports  in  them  the  presence  of  261  species  of  birds,  none 
of  which  may  be  hunted  or  shot.  Into  Sequoia  Park  20  dwarf  elk 
and  84  wild  turkeys  have  been  introduced,  the  former  from  the  herd  of 
Miller  and  Lux. 

Other  National  Parks 

Sully  Hills  National  Park,  at  Devil's  Lake  (Fort  Totten),  North 
Dakota.     Area  960  acres. 

Platt  National  Park,  Sulphur  Springs,  Oklahoma;  on  account  of 
many  mineral  springs.     Area  848  acres. 

Mesa  Verde  National  Park,  Southwestern  Colorado;  on  account 
of  cliff  dwellings,  and  wonderful  cliff  and  canyon  scenery.  Area,  66 
square  miles. 

National  Monuments 

Under  a  special  act  of  Congress,  the  President  of  the  United  States 
has  the  power  forever  to  set  aside  from  private  ownership  and  occupation 
any  important  natural  scenery,  or  curiosity,  or  wonderland,  the  preser- 
vation of  which  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  of  National  importance,  and  a 
duty  to  the  whole  people  of  the  United  States.  This  is  accomplished  by 
presidential  proclamation  creating  a  "national  monument." 

Under  the  terms  of  this  act,  28  national  monuments  have  been  created, 
up  to  1912,  of  which  17  are  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Department  of 
the  Interior,  and  11  are  managed  by  the  Department  of  Agriculture. 
The  full  list  is  as  follows: 


Alaska: 

Colorado: 

South  Dakota: 

Sitka 

Wheeler 
Colorado 

Jewel  Cave 

Arizona: 

Montezuma  Castle 

Montana: 

Lewis  &  Clark  Cavern 

Utah: 

Petrified  Forest 

Natural  Bridges 

Tonto 

Big  Hole  Battlefield 

Mukuntuweap 

Grand  Canyon 

Rainbow  Bridge 

Tumacacori 

Navajo 

New  Mexico: 

El  Morro 

Washington: 

California: 

Chaco  Canyon 

Mount  Olympus 

Lassen  Peak 

Gila  Cliff  Dwellings 

Cinder  Cove 

Gran  Quivira 

Muir  Woods 

Wyoming: 

Pinnacles 

Oregon : 

Devil's  Tower 

Devil's  Postpile 

Oregon  Caves 

Shoshone  Cavern 

NATIONAL   AND   STATE  PRESERVES  AND   REFUGES 


345 


The  National  Bird  Refuges. — Says  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer*:  "National 
bird  reservations  have  been  established  during  the  last  ten  years  by 
Executive  order  for  the  purpose  of  affording  protection  to  important 
breeding  colonies  of  water  birds,  or  to  furnish  refuges  for  migratory 
species  on  their  northern  or  southern  flights,  or  during  winter.  With 
few  exceptions  these  reservations  are  either  small  rocky  islets  or  tracts 
of  marsh  land  of  no  agricultural  value." 

These  reservations  are  of  immense  value  to  bird  life,  and  their  crea- 
tion represents  the  highest  possible  wisdom  in  utilizing  otherwise  value- 
less portions  of  the  national  domain.  Dr.  Palmer's  alphabetical  list  of 
them  is  as  follows,  numbered  in  the  order  of  their  creation: 


Belle  Fourche,  S.  Dak.  .34 

Bering  Sea,  Alaska 44 

Bogoslof,  Alaska 51 

Breton  Island,  La 2 

Bumping  Lake,  Wash..  .39 

Carlsbad,  N.  Mex 31 

Chase  Lake,  N.  Dak..  .  .20 

Clealum,  Wash 38 

Clear  Lake,  Cal 52 

Cold  Springs,  Oreg 33 

Conconully,  Wash 40 

Copalis  Rock,  Wash.  ...  13 

Culebra,  P.  R 48 

Deer  Flat,  Idaho 29 

East  Park,  Cal 28 

East  Timbalier,  La 14 

Farallon,  Cal 49 

Flattery  Rocks,  Wash.  .  11 
Forrester  Island,  Alaska.53 


Green  Bay,  Wis 56 

Hawaiian  Is.,  Hawaii..  .  .26 
Hazy  Islands,  Alaska. ...  54 
Huron  Islands,  Mich ....   4 

Indian  Key,  Fla 7 

Island  Bay,  Fla 24 

Kachess,  Wash 37 

Keechelus,  Wash 36 

Key  West,  Fla 17 

Klamath  Lake,  Oreg.  ...  18 

Loch-Katrine,  Wyo 25 

Malheur  Lake,  Oreg.  ...  19 

Matlacha  Pass,  Fla 23 

Minidoka,  Idaho  . ' 43 

Mosquito  Inlet,  Fla 15 

Niobrara,  Nebr 55 

PalmaSola,  Fla 22 

Passage  Key,  Fla 6 

Pathfinder,  Wyo 41 


Pelican  Island,  Fla 1 

Pine  Island,  Fla 21 

Pribilof ,  Alaska 50 

Quillayute  N'dles,  Ala.skal2 

Rio  Grande,  N.  Mex 32 

St.  Lazaria,  Alaska 46 

Salt  River,  Ariz 27 

Shell  Keys,  La 9 

Shoshone,  Wyo 42 

Siskiwit,  Mich 5 

Strawberry  Valley,  Utah  35 
Stump  Lake,  N.  Dak. ...   3 

Tern  Islands,  La 8 

Three  Arch  Rocks,  Oreg.  10 

Tortugas  Keys,  Fla 16 

Tuxedni,  Alaska 45 

Willow  Creek,  Mont ....  30 
Yukon  Delta,  Alaska. ...  47 


In  addition  to  the  above,  the  following  governmental  reservations 
have  been  established  for  the  protection  of  wild  life:  Yes  Bay,  Alaska, 
of  35,200  acres;  Afognak  Island,  Alaska,  800  sq.  miles;  Midway  Islands 
Naval  Reservation,  H.  T. ;  Farallon  Island,  Point  Reyes  and  Ano  Nuevo 
Island,  California;  Destruction  Island,  Washington,  and  Hawaiian 
Islands  Reservation  (Laysan). 

State  Game  Preserves  in  the  United  States 

Pennsylvania. — The  proposition  that  every  state,  territory  and 
province  in  North  America  and  everywhere  else,  should  establish  a  series 
of  state  forest  and  game  preserves,  is  fairly  incontestable.  As  a  business 
proposition  it  is  to-day  no  more  a  debatable  question,  or  open  to  argu- 
ment, than  is  the  water  supply  or  sewer  system  of  a  city.  The  only  per- 
fect way  to  conserve  a  water  supply  for  a  great  human  population  is  by 
acquiring  title  to  water  sheds,  and  either  protecting  the  forests  upon 
them,  or  planting  forests  in  case  none  exist. 

In  one  important  matter  the  state  of  Pennsylvania  has  been  wide 
awake,  and  in  advance  of  the  times.       I  will  cite  her  system  of  forest 

*National  Reservations  for  the  Protection  of   Wild  Life,  bv  T.  S.  Palmer,  U.  S. 
Dept.  of  Agriculture,  Circular  No.  87,  Oct.  5,  1912. 


84(1  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

reserves  and  game  preserves,  as  a  model  plan  for  other  states  to  follow ; 
and  I  sincerely  hope  that  by  the  time  the  members  of  the  present  State 
Game  Commission  have  passed  from  earth  the  people  of  Pennsylvania 
will  have  learned  the  value  of  the  work  they  are  now  doing,  and  at  least 
give  them  the  appreciation  that  is  deserved  by  public-spirited  citizens 
who  do  large  things  for  the  People  without  hope  of  material  reward. 
At  this  moment,  Commissioner  John  M.  Phillips  and  Dr.  Joseph  Kalbfus 
are  putting  their  heart's  blood  into  the  business  of  preserving  and  increas- 
ing the  game  and  other  wild  life  of  Pennsylvania;  and  the  utter  lack  of 
appreciation  that  is  now  being  shown  in  some  quarters  is  really  distressing. 
I  I'efer  particularly  to  the  utterly  misguided  and  mistaken  body  of  hunters 
and  anglers  having  headquarters  at  Harrisburg,  whose  members  are 
grossly  mislead  into  a  wrong  position  by  a  man  who  seeks  to  secure  a 
salaried  state  position  through  the  hostile  organization  that  he  has 
built  up,  apparently  for  his  own  use.  In  the  belief  that  those  members 
generally  are  mislead  and  not  mean-spirited,  and  that  the  organization 
contains  a  majority  of  conscientious  sportsmen,  I  predict  that  ere  long 
the  evil  genius  of  Pennsylvania  game  protection  will  be  ordered  to  the 
rear,  while  the  organization  as  a  whole  takes  its  place  on  the  side  of  the 
Game  Commission,  where  it  belongs. 

The  game  sanctuary  scheme  that  Pennsylvania  has  developed  is  so 
new  that  as  yet  only  a  very  small  fraction  of  the  people  of  that  state 
either  understand  it,  or  appreciate  its  far-reaching  importance. 

To  begin  with,  Pennsylvania  has  acquired  up  to  date  about  one 
million  acres  of  forest  lands,  scattered  through  26  of  the  67  counties  of 
the  state.  These  great  holdings  are  to  be  gradually  increased.  These 
wild  lands,  including  many  sterile  mountain  "farms"  of  no  real  value 
for  agricultural  purposes,  have  been  acquired,  first  of  all,  for  the  purpose 
of  conserving  the  water  supply  of  the  state;  and  they  are  called  the 
State  Forest  Reserves. 

Next  in  order,  the  State  Game  Commission  has  created,  in  favorable 
localities  in  the  forest  reserves,  five  great  game  preserves.  The  plan  is 
decidedly  novel  and  original,  but  is  very  simple  withal.  In  the  center  of 
a  great  tract  of  forest  reserve,  a  specially  desirable  tract  has  been  chosen, 
and  its  boundaries  marked  out  by  the  stringing  of  a  single  heavy  fence 
wire,  surrounding  the  entire  selection.  The  area  within  that  boundary 
wire  is  an  absolute  sanctuary  for  all  wild  creatures  save  those  that 
prey  upon  game,  and  in  it  no  man  may  hunt  anything,  nor  fire  a  gun. 
The  boundary  wire  is  by  no  means  a  fence,  for  it  keeps  nothing  out 
nor  in. 

Outside  of  the  wire  and  the  sanctuary,  men  may  hunt  in  the  open 
season,  but  at  the  wire  every  chase  must  end.  If  the  hunted  deer  knows 
enough  to  flee  to  the  sanctuary  when  attacked,  so  much  the  better  for 
the  deer.  The  tide  of  wild  life  ebbs  and  flows  under  the  wire,  and  be- 
yond a  doubt  the  deer  and  grouse  will  quickly  find  that  within  it  lies 
absolute  safety.  There  the  breeding  and  rearing  of  young  may  go  on 
undisturbed. 


NATIONAL    AND   STATE   PRESERVES    AND    REFUGES  347 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  hunting  may  go  on  in  the  forest  reserve  areas 
surrounding  these  sanctuaries,  no  intelligent  sportsman  needs  to  be  told 
that  in  a  few  years  all  such  regions  will  be  teeming  with  deer,  grouse  and 
other  game.  Where  there  is  one  deer  to-day  there  will  be  twenty  ten 
years  hence, — because  the  law  of  Pennsylvania  forbids  the  killing  of  does; 
and  then  there  will  be  twenty  times  the  legitimate  hunting  that  there  is 
to-day.  For  example,  the  Clinton  County  Game  Preserve  of  3,200  acres 
is  surrounded  by  128,000  acres  of  forest  reserve,  which  form  legitimate 
hunting  grounds  for  the  game  bred  in  the  sanctuary  reservoir.  In  Clear- 
field County  the  game  .sanctuary  is  surrounded  by  47,000  acres  of  Forest 
Reserve. 

The  ^awc  jjreserves  created  in  Pennsylvania  u])  to  date  are  as  follows: 

In  Clinton  County 3,200  acres 

In  Clearfield  County 3,200  acres 

In  Franklin  County 3,200  acres 

In  Perry  County 3,200  acres 

In  Westmoreland  (^ounty 2, .500  acres 

It  is  the  deliberate  intention  of  the  Came  Commission  to  increase 
these  game  preserves  until  there  is  at  least  one  in  each  county. 

It  is  the  policy  of  the  Commission  to  clear  out  of  the  game  sanctuaries 
all  the  mammals  and  birds  that  destroy  wild  life,  such  as  foxes,  .mink, 
weasels,  skunks  and  destructive  hawks  and  owls.  This  is  accomplished 
partly  by  buying  old  horses,  killing  them  in  the  preserves  and  poisoning' 
them  thoroughly  with  strychnine. 

Each  preserve  now  contains  a  nucleus  herd  of  white-tailed  deer,  some 
of  them  imported  from  northern  Michigan.  Ruffed  grouse  are  breeding 
rapidly,  and  in  the  Clearfield  Cotmty  Preserve  there  are  said  to  be  at 
least  three  thousand.  The  Game  Commission  considers  it  a  patriotic 
duty  to  preserve  the  wild  turkey,  ruffed  grouse  and  quail,  rather  than 
have  those  species  replaced  at  great  expense  by  species  imported  from  the 
old  world.  In  their  work  for  the  protection,  preservation  and  increase  of 
the  game  of  Pennsylvania — partly  for  the  purpose  of  providing  legitimate 
hunting  for  the  mechanic  as  well  as  the  millionaire, — the  State  Game 
Commissioners  are  putting  a  great  amount  of  thought  and  labor,  and 
whenever  their  efforts  are  criticized,  their  motives  impunged  or  their 
honesty  questioned  by  men  who  are  not  worthy  to  unlace  their  shoes, 
it  makes  me  tired  and  angry. 

New  York: 

The  Adirondack  vState  Park. — With  wi.se  and  commendable  fore- 
thought, the  state  of  New  York  has  preserved  in  the  Adirondack  wilder- 
ness, familiarly  known  as  "the  North  Woods,"  a  magnificent  forest 
domain  forever  dedicated  to  campers,  outdoorsmen  and  hunters.  At 
present  (1912)  it  contains  2,031  square  miles  (1,300.000  acres)  of  forest- 
clad  hills,  valleys  and  mountains,  adorned  by  countless  lakes  and  streams. 
By  some  persons  it  has  been  believed  that  in  the  State's  forests  the 
cutting  and  sale  of  large  trees  would  be  justifiable  business,  and  agreeable 


348  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFB- 

to  the  public;  but  it  has  been  demonstrated  that  this  is  not  the  case. 
The  people  of  the  state  firmly  object  to  the  havoc  that  is  unavoidably 
wrought  by  logging  operations  in  beautiful  forests.  The  state  does  not 
yet  need  any  of  the  money  that  could  be  derived  from  such  operations. 
The  chief  anxiety  of  the  public  is  that  hereafter  forest  fires  shall  be  pre- 
vented, no  matter  what  fire  protection  may  cost!  The  burning  of  coal 
on  any  railway  operated  through  the  Adirondacks  should  be  made  a 
penal  offense. 

Montana: 

In  1911  Governor  Norris,  Senator  Cone  and  the  legislature  of  Mon- 
tana, at  the  solicitation  of  W.  R.  Felton,  L.  A.  Huffman  and  others, 
created  the  Snow  Creek  Game  Preserve,  fronting  for  ten  miles  on  the 
Missouri  River,  in  the  northern  side  of  Dawson  County.  It  is  a  mag- 
nificent tract  of  bad-lands,  very  deeply  eroded  and  carved,  and  highly 
picturesque.  The  new  state  preserve  contains  96  square  miles,  but  there 
is  so  little  grazing  ground  for  antelope  and  bison  it  is  absolutely  impera- 
tive that  a  narrow  strip  of  level  grass  land  should  be  added  along  the 
southern  border.  This  proposed  addition  is  being  fiercely  resisted^  by 
an  organized  movement  of  the  sheep  owners  of  Montana  (the  National 
Wool  Growers'  Association),  who  naturally  want  the  public  domain  for 
the  free  grazing  of  their  tariff-protected  sheep-herds.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  the  three  sheep  men  south  of  the  preserve, — the  only  men 
who  really  are  affected, — will  be  able  to  thwart  a  movement  that  has  for 
its  object  the  development  of  a  very  good  game  preserve  for  the  benefit 
of  the  ninety  millions  of  the  general  American  public.  The  range  is 
necessary  to  contain  representatives  of  the  big  game  of  the  plains  that 
has  been  so  ruthlessly  swept  away,  and  particularly  the  vanishing  prong- 
horned  antelope,  once  very  numerous  in  that  region. 

In  order  to  relieve  the  sheep  men  of  all  trouble  on  account  of  that 
preserve,  the  area  should  be  enlarged  to  the  right  dimensions  and  made  a 
national  preserve.  A  bill  for  that  purpose  (Senate  5,286)  is  now  before 
the  Senate,  in  Senator  McLean's  Committee,  and  help  is  needed  to  over- 
come the  active  hostility  of  the  sheep  men,  who  vow  that  it  never  shall  he 
passed!  All  persons  who  read  this  are  invited  to  take  this  matter  up  with 
their  Senators  and  Representatives,  without  a  moment's  delay. 

Wyoming: 

The  Teton  State  Preserve. — One  of  the  largest  and  most  im- 
portant state  game  preserves  thus  far  established  by  any  of  our  states 
is  that  which  was  created  by  Wyoming,  in  1904.  It  is  situated  along  the 
south  of,  and  fully  adjoining,  the  Yellowstone  Park,  and  its  area  is 
900  square  miles  (576,000  acres).  Its  special  purpose  is  to  supplement 
for  the  elk  herds  and  other  big  game  the  protection  from  killing  that 
previously  had  been  found  in  the  Yellowstone  Park  alone.  The  State 
Preserve  is  an  admirable  half-way  house  for  the  migrating  herds  when 
they  leave  the  National  Park  to  seek  their  regular  winter  ranges  in  and 
around  the  Jackson  Valley. 


NATIONAL    AND    STATE   PRESERVES  AND   REFUGES 


349 


BIRD   RESERVATIONS  ON    THE  GULF   COAST  AND  FLORIDA 

In  1909,  Wyoming  established  the  Big  Horn  Game  Preserve,  in  the 
mountain  range  of  that  name.  Into  it  25  elk  were  taken  from  Jackson 
Hole,  and  set  free,  in  1910,  at  the  expense  of  the  Sheridan  Cotmty  Sports- 
men's Club. 

Louisiana: 

Great  developments  for  the  preservation  of  wild  life  have  recently- 
been  witnessed  in  Louisiana,  all  due  to  the  initiative  and  persistent 
activities  of  two  men,  Edward  A.  Mcllhenny,  of  Avery  Island,  La.,  and 
Charles    Willis    Ward,    of    Michigan,    lumbemian    and    horticulturist. 

The  Louisiana  State  Wild  Fowl  Refuge  on  Vermillion  Bay,  has 
an  area  of  13,000  acres.  It  was  presented  to  the  state  by  Messrs.  Ward 
and  Mcllhenn}^  and  formally  accepted  and  protected.  It  contains  a 
great  area  of  fresh-water  ponds  and  marshy  meadows,  wherein  grows 
an  abundant  supply  of  food  for  wild  fowl.  It  contains  several  miles  of 
gravel  beach,  which  during  the  winter  season  is  visited  by  thousands  of 
wild  geese  in  quest  of  their  indispensable  supply  of  gravel.  The  ponds 
within  its  borders  furnish  feeding-grounds  for  canvasback  ducks,  red- 
head, mallard,  blackhead  and  various  species  of  wild  geese. 

Other  State  Game  Preserves 

Acres 

Idaho. — Payette  River  Game  Preserve 230,000 

California. — ^Pinnacles  Game  Preserve 2.080 

Wyoming. — Big  Horn  Mountains  Game  Preserve. 
Montana. — Yellowstone  Game  Preserve. 

Pryor  Mountain  Game   Preserve. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 
GAME  PRESERVES  AND  GAME  LAWS  IN  CANADA 

As  now  set  forth  on  the  map  of  North  America,  Canada  is  a  vast 
country.  We  must  no  longer  think  of  Ontario  and  Quebec  as  "Canada 
West"  and  "Canada  East,"  because  the  new  assistant-nation  owns  and 
rules  everything  from  Labrador  to  British  C(  Jumbia,  and  all  the  north- 
ern mainland  save  Alaska. 

Although  the  fauna  of  Canada  is  strictly  boreal,  it  is  sufficiently  dis- 
persed and  diversified  to  demand  wise  legislation,  and  plenty  of  it.  For  a 
nation  with  an  outfit  of  provinces  so  new,  Canada  already  is  well  advanced 
in  the  matter  of  game  laws  and  game  preserves,  and  in  some  respects  she 
has  set  the  pace  for.  her  southern  neighbors.  For  example,  in  New 
Brunswick  we  see  the  lordly  moose  successfully  hunted  for  sport,  not 
only  without  being  exterminated  but  actually  on  a  basis  that  permits  it 
to  increase  in  number.  In  Nova  Scotia  we  see  a  law  in  force  which 
successfully  prohibits  the  waste  of  moose  meat,  a  loss  that  characterizes 
moose  hunting  everywhere  else  throughout  the  range  of  that  animal. 
All  over  southern  Canada  the  use  of  automatic  shotguns  in  htmting  is 
strictly  prohibited. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  laws  of  the  Canadians  are  weak  in  not  pre- 
venting the  sale  of  all  wild  game  and  the  killing  of  antelope.  In  the 
matter  of  game-selling,  there  are  far  too  many  open  doors,  and  a  sweeping 
reform  is  very  necessary. 

Speaking  generally,  and  with  application  from  Labrador  to  British 
Columbia,  the  American  process  of  game  extermination  according  to  law 
is  vigorously  and  successfully  being  pursued  by  the  people  of  Canada. 
The  open  seasons  are  too  long,  and  the  bag  limits  are  too  generous  to  the 
gunners.  As  it  is  elsewhere,  the  bag-limit  laws  on  birds  are  a  farce,  be- 
cause it  is  impossible  to  enforce  them,  save  on  every  tenth  man.  For 
example,  in  his  admirable  "Final  Report  of  the  Ontario  Game  and 
Fisheries  Commission"  (1912),  Commissioner  Kelly  Evans  says: 

"The  prairie  chicken,  which  formerly  was  comparativel}''  plentiful 
throughout  the  greater  portion  of  the  Rainy  River  District,  has  now 
become  practically  extinct  in  that  region.  Various  causes  have  been 
assigned  for  this,  but  it  would  seem,  as  usual,  to  have  been  mainly  the 
fault  of  indiscriminate  and  excessive  slaughter."     (Page  226.) 

Like  the  United  States,  the  various  portions  of  Canada  have  their 
various  local  troubles  in  wild-life  protection.  I  think  the  greatest  prac- 
tical difficulties,  and  the  most  real  opposition  to  adequate  measures,  is 
found  in  the  Provinces  of  Quebec  and  Ontario.    Is  it  because  the  French- 


GAME  PRP:SF.RVES  AND   LAWS   IN    CANADA  351 

descended  population  is  impatient  of  real  restraint,  and  objects  to  meas- 
ures that  are  drastic,  even  though  they  are  necessary?  In  Ontario. 
Commissioner  Evans  has  been  splendidly  supported  by  the  Government, 
and  by  all  the  real  sportsmen  of  that  province;  but  the  gunners  and 
guerrillas  of  destruction  have  successfully  postponed  several  of  the  re- 
forms that  he  has  advocated,  and  which  should  have  been  carried  into 
effect. 

So  far  as  public  moral  support  for  game  protection  is  concerned  I 
think  that  the  prairie  and  mountain  provinces  have  the  best  of  it.  In 
Manitoba,  Saskatchewan,  Alberta,  Athabasca  and  British  Columbia, 
the  spirit  of  the  people  is  mainly  correct,  and  the  chief  thing  that  seems 
to  be  lacking  is  a  Kelly  Evans  in  each  of  those  provinces  to  urge  public 
sentiment  into  strong  action.  For  example,  why  should  Alberta  still 
permit  the  hunting  and  killing  of  prong-horned  antelope,  when  it  is  so 
well  known  that  that  species  is  vanishing  like  a  mist  before  the  morning 
sun?  I  think  it  is  because  no  one  seems  to  have  risen  up  as  G.  O.  Shields 
did  in  the  United  States,  to  make  a  big  fuss  about  it,  and  demand  a  re- 
form. At  any  rate,  all  the  provinces  of  Canada  that  still  possess  antelope 
should  immediately  pass  laws  giving  that  species  absolute  close  seasons  for 
ten  years.  Why  neglect  it  longer,  when  such  neglect  is  now  so  very 
wrong?  Whether  this  is  done  or  not,  I  sincerely  hope  that  hereafter  no 
true  American  sportsman,  will  be  guilty  of  killing  one  of  the  vanishing 
antelope  of  Canada,  even  though  "the  law  doth  give  it." 

The  Game  Preserves  of  Canada 

In  the  creation  of  National  parks  and  gaine  preserves,  some  of  the 
provinces  of  the  Canadian  nation  have  displayed  a  degree  of  foresight 
and  enterprise  that  merits  sincere  admiration.  While  in  different  j^rox^- 
inces  the  exact  status  of  these  establishments  may  \'ary  somewhat,  the 
main  purpose  of  each  is  the  same, — the  preservation  of  the  forests  and 
the  wild  life.  In  all  of  them  a  regulated  amount  of  fishing  is  permitted, 
and  in  some  the  taking  of  fur-bearing  animals  is  permitted ;  but  I  believe 
in  all  the  birds  and  furless  mammals  are  strictly  protected.  In  some 
parks  the  carrying  of  firearms  still  is  permitted,  but  that  pri\dlege  is 
quite  out  of  harmony  with  the  spirit  and  purposes  of  a  game  preserve, 
and  should  be  abolished.  If  it  is  necessary  to  carry  firearms  through  a 
preserve,  as  often  happens  in  the  Yellowstone  Park,  it  can  be  done  under 
seals  that  are  affixed  by  duly  appointed  officers  •  and  thus  will  temptation 
be  kept  out  of  the  way  of  sinners. 

Up  to  this  date  I  never  have  seen  a  publication  which  set  forth  in  one 
place  even  so  much  as  an  annotated  list  of  the  game  preserves  of  the 
various  provinces  of  Canada,  and  at  present  exact  information  regarding 
them  is  rather  difficult  to  obtain.  It  seems  that  an  adequate  govern- 
mental publication  on  this  subject  is  now  due,  and  overdue. 

Ontario. — "At  the  present  time,"  says  Commissioner  Evans  in  his 
"Final  Report,"  "the  Algonquin  National  Park  is  the  only  actual  game 
preserve  in  the  Pro\'ince,  being  in  fact  a  game  reserve  and  not  a  forest 


352  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

reserve;  but  in  the  past  at  least  a  measure  of  protection  would  seem  to 
have  been  afforded  the  game  in  most  of  the  [forest]  reserves,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  carrying  of  firearms  therein  has  been  discouraged,  and  it 
would  appear  to  require  but  the  passing  of  an  Order-in- Council  to  render 
the  carrying  of  firearms  in  all  reserves  illegal.  It  is  sincerely  to  be  hoped 
that  not  only  will  such  action  be  taken  without  delay,  but  also  that  all 
the  forest  reserves  will  be  declared  game  reserves  in  the  strictest  sense." 

To  this  sentiment  all  friends  of  wild  life  will  join  a  fervent  wish  for  its 
realization.  As  conditions  are  to-day,  it  is  impossible  to  have  too  many 
game  reserves!  There  is  everything  to  gain  and  nothing  to  lose  by  making 
every  national  forest  and  forest  reserve  on  the  whole  continent  of  North 
America  a  game  preserve  in  the  strictest  sense,  and  we  hope  to  live  to  see 
that  end  accomplished,  both  in  the  United  States  and  Canada. 

The  Algonquin  National  Park  is  situated  in  the  Parry  Sound  re- 
gion, just  above  the  Muskoka  Lakes,  and  it  has  an  area  of  1,930  square 
miles.  It  is  well  stocked  with  moose,  caribou,  white-tailed  deer,  black 
bear  and  beaver.  During  the  period  of  protection  the  beaver  have  in- 
creased so  greatly  that  about  1,000  were  trapped  last  year  for  the  market, 
by  officers  of  the  government;  and  about  25  were  sold  to  zoological 
gardens  and  parks,  at  $25  each. 

The  Quetico  Forest  Reserve,  area  1,560  square  miles,  was  created  as 
the  Canadian  complement  of  the  Minnesota  National  Forest  and  Game 
Preserve.  The  two  join  on  the  international  boundary,  and  each  helps 
to  protect  the  other.  Both  are  well  stocked  with  moose,  and  will  render 
valuable  service  in  the  preservation  of  a  mid-continental  contingent  of 
that  species. 

Alberta. — In  the  making  of  game  preserves  the  province  of  Alberta 
has  been  splendidly  progressive  and  liberal.  The  total  result  is  fairly 
beyond  the  reach  of  ordinary  words  of  praise.  It  sets  a  pace  that  should 
result  in  wide-spread  benefits  to  the  wild  life  of  North  America.  In  it 
there  is  nothing  faint-hearted.  It  should  make  some  of  our  States  think 
seriously  regarding  their  own  shortcomings  in  this  particular  field  of 
endeavor. 

Alberta's  National  Parks 

Acres  Sq.  miles 

Rocky  Mountains  Park 2,764,800  4,320 

Yoho  Park 1,799,680  2,812 

Glacier  Park 1,474,560  2,304 

Buffalo  Park 384,000  600 

Elk  Island  Park 40,000  62 

Jasper  Park 3,488,000  5,450 

Waterton  Lakes  Park 34,560  54 

9,985,600  15,602 

The  Rocky  Mountains  Park  is  near  Banff.  The  Yoho  and  Glacier 
Parks  are  near  Field.  The  Buffalo  Park  is  near  Wainwright,  on  the 
plains,  and  it  was  created  and  fenced  especially  as  a  hoine  for  the  herd 


GAME   PRESERVES   AND   LAWS   IN  CANADA  353 

of  American  bison  that  was  purchased  in  Montana  in    1909.       It  now 
contains  1,052  head  of  bison,  20  moose,  35  deer,  7  elk,  and  6  antelope. 

The  Elk  Island  Park  is  near  Fort  Saskatchewan  and  Lamont,  and 
at  this  date  (1912)  it  contains  53  bison,  28  elk,  30  deer  and  5  moose. 
The  bison  subsist  entirely  by  grazing,  and  upon  hay  cut  within  the  Park. 

Jasper  Park,  established  in  1908,  is  on  the  Athabasca  River  and  the 
Grand  Trvmk  Pacific  Railway,  near  Strathcona.  Sixty  miles  of  the  rail- 
way line  lie  within  the  Park.  vScenically,  Jasper  Park  is  a  rival  of  Rocky 
Mountains  Park,  and  undoubtedly  possesses  great  attractions  for 
travellers  who  appreciate  the  beauties  and  grandeur  of  Nature  as  ex- 
pressed in  mountains,  valleys,  lakes  and  streams. 

Waterton  Lakes  Park  is  situated  in  the  extreme  southwestern  corner 
of  Alberta,  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  surrounding  the  Waterton  Lakes. 
At  present  it  is  nine  miles  long  from  north  to  south  and  six  miles  wide, 
with  its  southern  end  resting  on  the  international  boundary,  and  adjoin- 
ing our  Glacier  Park.  It  is  the  home  of  a  few  bands  of  mountain  sheep 
that  carry  very  large  horns.  Through  the  initiative  of  Frederick  K. 
Vreeland,  the  Camp-Fire  Club  of  America  two  years  ago  represented  to 
the  Government  of  Alberta  the  great  desirabihty  of  enlarging  this  pre- 
serve, toward  the  north  and  west,  the  better  to  protect  the  mountain 
sheep  and  other  big  game  of  that  region.  The  suggestion  was  received 
in  a  friendly  spirit,  and  there  is  gcod  reason  to  hope  that  at  an  early  date 
the  enlargement  will  be  made. 

British  Columbia. — This  province  has  made  an  excellent  beginning 
in  the  creation  of  game  preserves.  The  first  agitation  on  that  subject  was 
begun  in  1906,  by  two  sportsmen  whose  names  in  connection  w^th  it  have 
long  since  been  forgotten.  On  November  15,  1908,  the  Legislative  Coun- 
cil of  British  Columbia  issued  a  proclamation  that  created  a  very  fine 
game  preserve  in  the  East  Kootenai  District,  between  the  Elk  and  Bull 
Rivers  and  northwestward  thereof  to  the  White  River  country.  By  an 
unfortunate  oversight,  the  new  preserve  never  has  been  officially  named, 
but  we  may  designate  it  here  as 

The  Elk  River  Game  Preserve. — This  preserve  has  a  total  area  of 
about  450  square  miles,  and  includes  a  fine  tract  of  mountains,  valleys, 
lakes  and  streams.  It  contained  in  1908  about  1,000  mountain  goats,  200 
sheep,  a  few  elk  and  deer,  and  about  50  grizzly  bears.  All  these  have 
notably  increased  during  the  period  of  absolute  protection  that  they 
have  enjoyed.  It  is  probable  that  this  preserve  contains  more  white 
mountain  goats  than  any  other  preserve  that  thus  far  has  been  made. 
It  was  in  this  region  that  Mr.  John  M.  Phillips  and  Prof.  Henry  Fairfield 
Osborne  made  the  first  mountain  goat  photographs  ever  made  at  close 
range.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  protection  of  this  preserve,  both  as  to 
its  wild  life  and  its  timber,  will  be  made  perpetual. 

Eraser  River  Preserve. — Next  after  the  above  there  was  created  in 
British  Columbia  a  game  preserve  covering  a  large  portion  of  the  moun- 
tain territory  that  rises  between  the  North  and  South  Forks  of  the 
Fraser  River.     It  is  about  75  miles  long  by  30  miles  wide  and  contains 


354  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

about  2,250  square  miles.  Concerning  its  character  and  wild-life  popula- 
tion we  have  no  details. 

Yalakom  Game  Preserve. — On  the  north  side  of  Bridge  River  (a 
western  tributary  of  the  Fraser),  about  twenty  miles  above  Lilloet, 
there  has  been  established  a  game  preserve  having  an  area  of  about 
215  square  miles. 

Manitoba. — In  the  making  of  game  preserves,  Manitoba  has  made 
an  excellent  beginning.  It  is  good  to  see  from  Duck  Mountain  in  the 
north  to  Turtle  Mountain  in  the  south  a  chain  of  four  liberal  preserves, 
each  one  protected  in  unmistakable  terms  as  follows :  "  Carrying  fire- 
arms, hunting  or  trapping  strictly  prohibited  within  this  area." 

The  lake  regions  of  Manitoba,  Saskatchewan  and  Alberta  form  what 
is  probably  the  most  important  wild-fowl  breeding-ground  in  North 
America.  To  a  great  extent  it  rests  with  those  provinces  to  say 
whether  the  central  United  States  shall  have  any  ducks  and  geese,  or 
not !  It  is  high  time  that  an  international  treaty  should  be  made  between 
the  United  States,  Canada  and  Mexico  for  the  federal  protection  of  all 
migratory  birds. 

These  preserves  are  of  course  intended  to  conserve  wild-fowl,  shore- 
birds,  grouse  and  all  other  birds,  as  well  as  big  game.  Thanks  to  the 
cooperation  of  Mr.  J.  M.  Macoun,  of  the  Canadian  Geological  vSurvey, 
I  am  able  to  offer  the  following; 

List  of  Manitoba's  Game  Preserves 

Duck  Mountain  Preserve 324  sq.  miles,  207,3(30  acres. 

Riding  Mountain  Preserve 360   "        "     230,000      " 

Spruce  Woods  Preserve 64    "        "        40,960      " 

Turtle  Mountain   Preserve 100   "        "        64,000      " 

848   "        "       542.320      " 

Manitoba  is  to  be  congratulated  on  this  record. 

Quebec. — This  province  has  created  two  huge  game  preserves,  well 
worthy  of  the  fauna  that  they  are  intended  to  conserve  when  all  hunt- 
ing in  them  is  prohibited ! 

The  Laurentides  National  Park  is  second  in  area  of  all  the  national 
parks  of  Canada,  being  surpassed  only  by  the  Rocky  Mountains  Park  of 
British  Columbia.  Its  area  is  3565  square  miles,  or  2,281,600  acres. 
It  occupies  the  entire  central  portion  of  the  great  area  surrounded  by 
Lake  St.  John,  the  Saguenay  River,  the  wide  portion  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and  the  St.  Maurice  River  on  the  west.  Its  southern  boundary 
is  in  several  places  only  16  miles  from  the  St.  Lawrence,  while  its  most 
northern  angle  is  within  13  miles  of  Lake  St.  John.  Its  greatest  width 
from  east  to  west  is  71  miles,  and  its  greatest  length  from  north  to  south 
is  79  miles.  It  covers  a  huge  watershed  in  which  over  a  dozen  large 
rivers  and  many  small  ones  have  their  sources.  It  is  indeed  a  forest 
primeval.     The  rivers  are  well  stocked  with  fish,  and  the  big  game  in- 


GAME   PRESERVES   AND   LAWS  IX  CANADA  35.5 

eludes  moose,  woodland  earibou,  black  bear,  lynx,  beaver,  marten,  fisher, 
mink,  fox,  and — -sad  to  say — the  g^ray  wolf.  The  caribou  live  in  rather 
small  bands,  from  10  up  to  100. 

Unfortunately,  huntinj.,^  under  license  is  i)ermittcd  in  the  Laurentian 
National  Park,  and  therefore  it  is  by  no  means  a  real  game  preserve! 
It  is  a  near-preserve. 

The  Gaspesian  Forest,  Fish  and  Game  Preserve,  created  in  190(3,  is  in 
"the  Gaspe  country."  and  it  has  an  area  of  2500  square  miles  situated 
in  the  eastern  Quebec  counties  of  Gaspe  and  Alatane. 

The  Connaiighi  National  Park,  to  be  named  in  honor  of  H.  R.  H.  the 
Duke  of  Connaught,  has  been  proposed  by  Mr.  J.  M.  Macoun,  of  the 
Canadian  Geological  Survey.  The  general  location  chosen  is  the  moun- 
tains and  forested  territory  north  of  Ottawa  and  the  Ottawa  River. 
within  easy  access  from  the  Canadian  capitol.  On  the  map  the  location 
recommended  lies  between  the  Gatincau  River  on  the  east  and  Wolf 
Lake  on  the  west.  The  proposal  is  meeting  with  much  popular  favor, 
and  it  is  extremely  orobable  that  it  will  be  earned  into  effect  at  an 
early  date. 

Labrador. — During  the  past  two  years  Lieut. -Col.  William  Wood 
has  strongly  advocated  the  making  of  game  preserves  in  Labrador,  that 
will  not  only  tend  to  preserve  the  scanty  fauna  of  that  region  from  ex- 
tinction but  will  also  aid  in  bringing  it  back.  While  Col.  Wood's  very 
energetic  and  praiseworthy  campaign  has  not  yet  been  crowned  with 
success,  undoubtedly  it  will  be  successful  in  the  near  future,  because 
ultimateh^  such  causes  always  w^n  their  objects,  provided  they  are  prose- 
cuted with  the  firm  and  unflagging  persistence  which  has  characterized 
this  particular  campaign.  We  congratulate  Col.  Wood  on  the  success 
that  he  will  achieve  in  the  near  future ! 

Game  Laws  of  the  Canadian  Provinces 

Alberta. — The  worst  feature  of  the  Alberta  laws  is  the  annual  open 
season  on  antelope,  two  of  which  may  be  killed  under  each  license.  This 
is  entirely  wrong,  and  a  perpetual  close  season  should  at  once  be  enacted. 
Duck  shooting  in  August  is  wrong,  and  the  season  should  not  open  until 
September.  It  is  not  right  that  duck -killing  should  be  made  so  easy  and 
so  fearfully  prolonged  that  extermination  is  certain.  .-1//  killing  of  cranes 
and  shore  birds  should  be  absolutely  stopped,  for  five  years.  No  wheat- 
producing  province  can  afford  the  expense  to  the  wheat  crops  of  the 
slaughter  of  shore  birds,  thirty  species  of  which  arc  great  crop-protectors. 

The  bag  limit  of  two  sheep  is  too  high,  by  50  per  cent.  It  should 
immediately  be  cut  down  to  one  sheep,  before  sheep  hunting  in  Alberta 
becomes  a  lost  art.  Sheep  Minting  should  not  be  encouraged — quite  the 
reverse!  There  are  already  too  many  sheep-crazy  sportsmen.  The  bag 
limit  on  grouse  and  ptarmigan  of  20  per  day  or  200  in  a  season  is  simply 
legalized  slaughter,  no  more  and  no  less,  and  if  it  is  continued,  a  grouseless 
province  will  be  the  quick  result.    The  birds  are  not  sufficiently  numerous 


356  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

to  withstand  the  guns  on  that  basis.  Alberta  should  be  wiser  than  the 
states  below  the  international  boundary  that  are  annihiiating  their 
remnants  of  birds  as  fast  as  they  can  be  found. 

British  Columbia. — We  note  with  much  satisfaction  that  the 
Provincial  Game  Warden,  Mr.  A.  Bryan  Williams,  has  beer  allowed 
$37,000  for  the  pay  of  game  wardens,  and  $28,000  for  the  destruction  of 
wolves,  coyotes,  pumas  and  other  game-destroying  animals.  During  the 
past  two  years  the  following  game-destroyers  were  killea,  and  bounties 
were  paid  upon  them: 

1909-10     1910-11 

Wolves 655  518 

Coyotes 1,454  3,653 

Cougars 3S2  277 

Horned  Owls 854  2,285 

Golden  Eagles 29  73 

3,374  6,806 

"Now,"  says  Warden  Williams  in  his  excellent  annual  report  for  1911, 
"in  these  two  years  a  total  of  2,896  wolves  ani  cougars  and  5,141  coyotes 
were  destroyed,  as  well  as  a  number  of  others  poisoned  and  not  recovered 
:::or  the  bounty.  Allowing  fifty  head  for  each  wolf  and  cougar  and  ten 
for  each  coyote,  by  their  bounties  alone  196,210  head  of  game  and  domes- 
tic animals  were  saved.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  ieer  are  increasing  almost 
everywhere  ? ' ' 

The  great  horned  owl  has  been  and  still  is  a  great  scourge  to  the 
upland  game  birds,  partly  because  when  game  is  abundant  "they  become 
fastidious,  and  eat  only  the  brains  of  their  prey."  The  destruction  of 
3,139  of  them  on  the  Lower  Mainland  during  the  last  two  years  has  made 
these  owls  sing  very  small,  and  says  the  warden,  "Is  it  any  wonder  that 
grouse  are  again  increasing?" 

I  have  discussed  with  the  Provincial  Game  Warden  the  advisability 
of  putting  a  limit  of  one  on  the  grizzly  bear,  but  Mr.  Williams  advances 
good  reasons  for  the  opinion  that  it  would  be  impracticable  to  do  so  at 
present.  I  am  quite  sure,  however,  that  the  time  has  already  arrived 
when  a  limit  of  one  is  necessary.  During  the  present  year  three  of  my 
friends  who  went  hunting  in  British  Columbia,  each  killed  j  grizzly  bears! 
Hereafter  I  will  "locate  "  no  more  bear  hunters  in  that  country  until 
the  bag  limit  is  reduced  to  one  grizzly  per  year.  Since  1905  the  trapping 
of  bears  south  of  the  main  line  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway  has  been 
stopped ;  and  an  excellent  move  too.  A  Rocky  Mountain  without  a  grizzly 
bear  is  like  a  tissue-paper  rose. 

The  bag  limit  on  the  big  game  of  British  Columbia  is  at  least  twice 
too  liberal, — five  deer,  two  elk,  two  moose  (one  in  Kootenay  County), 
three  caribou  and  three  goats.  There  is  no  necessity  for  such  wasteful 
liberality.  Few  sportsmen  go  to  British  Columbia  for  the  sake  of  a  large 
lot  of  animals.  I  know  many  men  who  have  been  there  to  hunt,  and  the 
great  majority  cared  more  for  the  scenery  and  the  wild  romance  of  camp- 
ing out  in  ground  mountains  than  for  blood  and  trophies. 


GAME  PRESERVES  AND   LAWS   IN   CANADA  357 

Manitoba. — What  are  we  to  think  of  a  "bag  limit"  of  fifty  ducks 
per  day  in  October  and  November?  A  "limit"  indeed!  Evidently, 
Manitoba  is  tired  of  having  ducks,  ruffed  grouse,  pinnated  and  other 
grouse  pestering  her  farmers  and  laborers.  While  assuming  to  fix  bag 
limits  that  will  be  of  some  benefit  to  those  species,  the  limit  is  distinctly 
off,  and  nothing  short  of  a  quick  and  drastic  reform  will  save  a  remnant 
that  will  remain  visible  to  the  naked  eye. 

New  Brunswick. — This  is  the  banner  provmce  in  the  protection  of 
moose,  caribou  and  deer,  even  while  permitting  them  to  be  shot  for  sport. 
Of  course,  only  males  are  killed,  and  I  am  assured  by  competent  judges 
that  thus  far  the  kilHng  of  the  finest  and  largest  male  moose  has  had  no 
bad  effect  upon  the  stature  or  antlers  of  the  species  as  a  whole. 

Nova  Scotia. ^ — If  there  is  anything  wrong  with  the  game  laws  of 
Nova  Scotia,  it  lies  in  the  wide-open  sale  of  moose  meat  and  all  kinds  of 
feathered  game  during  the  open  season.  If  that  province  were  more 
heavily  populated,  it  would  mean  a  great  destruction  of  game.  Even 
with  conditions  as  they  are,  the  sale  permitted  is  entirely  wrong,  and 
against  the  best  interests  of  97  per  cent  of  the  people. 

As  previously  mentioned,  the  law  against  the  waste  of  moose  meat  is 
both  novel  and  admirable.  The  saving  of  any  considerable  portion  of 
the  flesh  of  a  full-grown  bull  moose,  along  with  its  head,  is  a  large  order; 
but  it  is  right.  The  degree  of  accountability  to  which  guides  are  held  for 
the  doings  of  the  men  whom  they  pilot  into  the  woods  is  entirely  com- 
mendable, and  worthy  of  imitation.  If  a  sportsman  or  gunner  does  the 
wrong  thing,  the  guide  loses  his  license. 

Saskatchewan. — This  is  another  of  the  too-liberal  provinces  having 
no  real  surplus  of  big  game  with  which  to  sustain  for  any  length  of  time 
an  excess  of  generosity.  I  am  told  that  in  this  province  there  is  now  a 
great  deal  of  open  country  around  each  wild  animal.  And  yet,  it  cheer- 
fully offers  two  moose,  two  elk,  two  caribou  and  two  antelope  per  season 
to  each  licensed  gunner  or  sportsman.  The  limit  is  too  generous  by  half. 
Why  throw  away  an  extra  $250  worth  of  game  with  each  license  ?  That 
is  precisely  what  the  people  of  Saskatchewan  are  doing  to-day. 

And  that  antelope-killing!  It  should  be  stopped  at  once,  and  for  ten 
years. 

Yukon. — This  province  permits  the  sale  of  all  the  finest  and  best 
wild  game  within  its  borders, — moose,  elk,  caribou,  bison,  musk-ox, 
sheep  and  goats!  The  flesh  of  all  these  may  be  sold  during  the  open 
season,  and  for  sixty  days  thereafter.  Of  the  species  named  above,  the 
barren  ground  caribou  is  the  only  one  regarding  which  we  need  not  worry ; 
because  that  species  still  exists  in  millions.  The  Osborn  caribou  {Rangifer 
osborni),  can  be  exterminated  in  our  own  times,  because  it  is  nowhere 
really  numerous,  and  it  inhabits  exposed  situations. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII r 

PRIVATE     GAME    PRESERVES 

Primarily,  in  the  early  days  of  the  Man-on-Horseback,  the  self- 
■elected  and  predatory  lords  of  creation  evolved  the  private  game  pre- 
serve as  a  scheme  for  preventing  other  fellows  from  shooting,  and  for 
keeping  the  game  sacred  to  slaughter  by  themselves.  The  idea  of  con- 
serving the  game  was  a  fourth-rate  consideration,  the  first  being  the 
estoppel  of  the  other  man.  The  old-world  owner  of  a  game  preserve 
delights  in  the  annual  killing  of  the  surplus  game,  and  we  have  even 
heard  it  whispered  that  in  the  Dark  Ages  there  were  kings  who  enjoyed 
the  wholesale  slaughter  of  deer,  wild  boar,  pheasants  and  grouse.  If 
we  may  accept  as  true  the  history  of  sport  in  Europe,  there  have  been 
men  who  have  loved  slaughter  with  a  genuine  blood-lust  that  is  quite 
foreign  to  the  real  nature-loving  sportsman. 

In  America,  the  impulse  is  different.  Here,  there  is  raging  a  genuine 
fever  for  private  gaine  preserves.  Some  of  those  already  existing  are  of 
fine  proportions,  and  cost  fortunes  to  create.  Every  true  sportsman  who 
is  rich  enough  to  own  a  private  game  preserve,  sooner  or  later  acquires 
one.  You  will  find  them  scattered  throughout  the  temperate  zone  of 
North  America  from  the  Bay  of  Fund}^  to  San  Diego.  I  have  had  in- 
vitations to  visit  preserves  in  an  unbroken  chain  from  the  farthest  corner 
of  Quebec  to  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  from  Grand  Island,  Lake  Superior 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  It  was  not  necessarily  to  hunt,  and  kill  some- 
thing, but  to  see  the  game,  and  the  beauties  of  nature. 

The  wealthy  American  and  Canadian  joyously  buys  a  tract  of  wilder- 
ness, fences  it,  stocks  it  with  game  both  great  and  small,  and  provides 
game  keepers  for  all  the  year  round.  At  first  he  has  an  idea  that  he  will 
"  hunt "  therein,  and  that  his  guests  will  hunt  also,  and  actually  kill  game. 
In  a  mild  way,  this  fiction  sometimes  is  maintained  for  years.  The 
owner  may  each  year  shoot  two  or  three  head  of  his  surplus  big  game, 
and  his  tenderfoot  guests  who  don't  know  what  real  hunting  is  may  also 
kill  something,  each  year.  But  in  most  of  the  American  preserves  with 
which  I  am  well  acquainted,  the  gentlemanly  "sport"  of  "hunting  big 
game"  is  almost  a  joke.  The  trouble  is,  usually,  the  owner  becomes  so 
attached  to  his  big  game,  and  admires  it  so  sincerely,  he  has  not  the 
heart  to  kill  it  himself ;  and  he  finds  no  joy  whatever  in  seeing  it  shot  down 
by  others! 

In  this  country  the  slaughter  of  game  for  the  market  is  not  con- 
sidered a  gentlemanly  pastime,  even  though  there  is  a  surplus  of  pre- 
serve-bred game  that  must  be  reduced.     To  the  average  American,  the 


PRIVATE   GAME    PRESERVES  ;io9 

slaughter  of  half -tame  elk,  deer  and  birds  that  have  been  bred  in  a 
preserve  does  not  appeal  in  the  least.  He  knows  that  in  the  protection 
of  a  preserve,  the  wild  creatures  lose  much  of  their  fear  of  man,  and 
become  easy  marks ;  and  shall  a  real  sportsman  go  out  with  a  gun  and  a 
bushel  of  cartridges,  on  a  pony,  and  without  warning  betray  the  con- 
fidence of  the  wild  in  terms  of  fire  and  blood?  Others  may  do  it  if  they 
like;  but  as  a  rule  that  is  not  what  an  American  calls  "sport."  One 
wide-awake  and  well-armed  grizzly  bear  or  mountain  sheep  outwitted 
on  a  mountain-side  is  worth  more  as  a  sporting  proposition  than  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  of  deer  carcasses  laid  out  side  by  side  on  a  nice  park 
lawn  to  be  photographed  as  "one  day's  kill." 

In  America,  the  shooting  of  driven  game  is  something  of  which  we 
know  little  save  by  hearsay.  In  Europe,  it  is  practiced  on  everything 
from  Scotch  grouse  to  Italian  ibex.  The  German  Crown  Prince,  in  his 
fascinating  little  volume  "From  My  Hunting  Da^^-Book,"  very  neatly 
fixes  the  value  of  such  shooting,  as  a  real  sportsman's  proposition,  in  the 
following  sentence: 

"The  shooting  of  driven  game  is  merely  a  question  of  marksmanship, 
and  is  after  all  more  in  the  nature  of  a  shooting  exercise  than  sport." 

I  have  seen  some  shooting  in  preserves  that  was  too  tame  to  be  called 
sport;  but  on  the  other  hand  I  can  testify  that  in  grouse  shooting  as  it 
is  done  behind  the  dogs  on  Mr.  Carnegie's  moor  at  Skibo,  it  is  sport  in 
which  the  hunter  earns  every  grouse  that  falls  to  his  gun.  At  the  same 
time,  also,  I  believe  that  the  shooting  of  madly  running  ibex,  as  it  is 
done  by  the  King  of  Italy  in  his  three  mountain  preserves,  is  sufficientlv 
difficult  to  put  the  best  big-game  hunter  to  the  test.  There  are  times 
when  shooting  driven  game  calls  for  far  more  dexterity  with  the  rifle 
than  is  ordinarily  demanded  in  the  still-hunt. 

In  America,  as  in  England  and  on  the  Continent  of  Europe,  private 
game  preserves  are  so  numerous  it  is  impossible  to  mention  more  than  a 
very  few  of  them,  unless  one  devotes  a  volume  to  the  subject.  Probabl}- 
there  are  more  than  five  hundred,  and  no  list  of  them  is  "up  to  date" 
for  more  than  one  day,  because  the  number  is  constantly  increasing.  I 
make  no  pretense  even  of  possessing  a  list  of  those  in  America,  and  I 
mention  only  a  few  of  those  with  which  I  am  best  acquainted,  by  wav 
of  illustration. 

One  of  the  earliest  and  the  most  celebrated  deer  parks  of  the  United 
States  was  that  of  Hon.  John  Dean  Caton,  of  two  hundred  acres,  located 
near  Ottawa,  111.,  established  about  1859.  It  was  the  experiments  and 
observations  made  in  that  park  that  yielded  Judge  Caton's  justly  famous 
book  on  "The  Antelope  and  Deer  of  America." 

The  first  game  preserve  established  by  an  incorporated  club  was 
"Blooming  Grove  Park,"  of  one  thousand  acres,  in  Pennsylvania,  where 
great  success  has  been  attained  in  the  breeding  and  rearing  of  white- 
tailed  deer. 

In  the  eastern  United  States  the  most  widely-known  game  preserve 
is  Blue  Mountain  Forest  Park,  near  Newport,  New  Hampshire.     It  was 


360  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

founded  in  1885,  by  the  late  Austin  Corbin,  and  has  been  loyally  and 
diligently  maintained  by  Austin  Corbin,  Jr.,  George  S.  Edgell  and  the 
other  members  of  the  Corbin  family.  Ownership  is  vested  in  the  Blue 
Mountain  Forest  Association.  The  area  of  the  preserve  is  27,000  acres, 
and  besides  embracing  much  fine  forest  on  Croydon  Mountain,  it  also 
contains  many  converted  farms  whose  meadow  lands  afford  good  grazing. 

This  preserve  contains  a  large  herd  of  bison  (86  head),  elk,  white- 
tailed  deer,  wild  boar  and  much  smaller  game.  The  annual  surplus  of 
bison  and  other  large  game  is  regularly  sold  and  distributed  throughout 
the  world  for  the  stocking  of  other  parks  and  zoological  gardens.  Each 
year  a  few  surplus  deer  are  quietly  killed  for  the  Boston  market,  but  a 
far  greater  number  are  sold  alive,  at  from  $25  to  $30  each  in  carload  lots. 

Iri  the  Adirondacks  of  northern  New  York,  there  are  a  great  many 
private  game  preserves.  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer,  in  his  pamphlet  on  "Private 
Game  Preserves"  (Department  of  Agriculture)  places  the  number  at  60, 
and  their  total  area  at  791,208  acres.  Some  of  them  have  caused  much 
irritation  among  some  of  the  hunting,  fishing  and  trapping  residents  of 
the  Adirondack  region.  They  seem  to  resent  the  idea  of  the  exclusive 
ownership  of  lands  that  are  good  hunting-grounds.  This  view  of  property 
rights  has  caused  much  trouble  and  some  bloodshed,  two  persons  having 
heen  killed  for  presuming  to  assert  exclusive  rights  in  large  tracts  of 
wilderness  property. 

"In  the  upland  preserve  under  private  ownership,"  says  Dr.  Palmer, 
* '  may  be  found  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  the  maintenance  of 
the  future  supply  of  game  and  game  birds.  Nearly  all  such  preserves  are 
maintained  for  the  propagation  of  deer,  quail,  grouse,  or  pheasants. 
They  vary  widely  in  area,  character,  and  purpose,  and  embrace  some  of 
the  largest  game  refuges  in  the  country.  Some  of  the  preserves  in  North 
Carolina  cover  from  15,000  to  30,000  acres;  several  in  South  Carolina 
■exceed  60,000  acres  in  extent."  The  Megantic  Club's  northern  preserve, 
on  the  boundary  between  Quebec  and  Maine,  embraces  nearly  200  square 
miles,  or  upward  of  125,000  acres. 

Comparatively  few  of  the  larger  preserves  are  enclosed,  and  on  such 
grounds,  hunting  becomes  sport  quite  as  genuine  as  it  is  in  regions  open 
to  free  hunting.  In  some  instances  part  of  the  tract  is  fenced,  while 
large  unenclosed  areas  are  protected  by  being  posted.  The  character  of 
their  tenure  varies  also.  Some  are  owned  in  fee  simple;  others,  partic- 
ularly the  larger  ones,  are  leased,  or  else  comprise  merely  the  shooting 
rights  on  the  land.  In  both  size  and  tenure,  the  upland  preserves  of  the 
United  States  are  comparable  with  the  grouse  moors  and  large  deer  forests 
■of  Scotland. 

Of  the  game  preserves  in  the  South,  I  know  one  that  is  quite  ideal. 
It  is  St.  Vincent  Island,  near  Apalachicola,  Florida,  in  the  northern  edge 
of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  It  was  purchased  in  1909  by  Dr.  Ray  V.  Pierce, 
and  his  guests  kill  perhaps  one  hundred  ducks  each  year  out  of  the 
thousands  that  flock  to  the  ten  big  ponds  that  occupy  the  eastern  third 
of  the  island.     Into  those  ponds  much  good  duck  food  has  been  intro- 


PRIVATE  GAME  PRESERVES 


361 


GULF  OF  MEXICO 


MAP    OP    MARSH    ISLAND   AND    ADJACENT    WILD-FOWL    PRESERVES 

duced, — Potamogeton  pectinatus  and  perfoliatus.  The  area  of  the  island 
is  twenty  square  miles.  Besides  being  a  great  winter  resort  for  ducks, 
its  sandy,  pine-covered  ridges  and  jungles  of  palme  to  and  live  oak 
afford  fine  haunts  and  feeding  grounds  for  deer.  Those  jungles  contain 
two  species  of  white-tailed  deer  {Odocoileus  louisiana  and  osceola),  and 
Dr.  Pierce  has  introduced  the  Indian  sambar  deer  and  Japanese  sika  deer 
(Cervus  sika),  both  of  which  are  doing  well.  We  are  watching  the  prog- 
ress of  those  big  sambar  deer  with  very  keen  interest,  and  it  is  to  be 
recorded  that  already  that  species  has  crossed  with  the  Louisiana  white- 
tailed  deer. 

During  the  autumn  of  1912',  pubHc  attention  in  the  United  States 
was  for  a  time  focused  on  the  purchase  of  Marsh  Island,  Louisiana,  by 
Mrs.  Russell  Sage,  and  its  permanent  dedication  to  the  cause  of  wild- 
life protection.  This  delightful  event  has  brought  into  notice  the 
Louisiana  State  Game  Preserve  of  13,000  acres  near  Marsh  Island, 
and  its  hinterland  (and  water)  of  11,000  acres  adjoining,  which  con- 
stitutes the  Ward-Mcllhenny  Wild  Fowl  Preserve.  These  three  great 
preserves  taken  together  as  they  lie  form  a  wild -fowl  sanctuary  of  great 
size,  and  of  great  value  to  the  whole  Mississippi  Valley.  Now  that  all 
duck-shooting  therein  has  been  stopped,  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  they 
shortly  will  be  inhabited  by  a  wild-fowl  population  that  will  really  stagger 
the  imagination. 

Duck-Shooting  "Preserves." — A  ducking  "preserve"  is  a  large 
tract  of  land  and  water  owned  by  a  few  individuals,  or  a  club,  for  the 
purpose  of  preserving  exclusively  for  themselves  and  their  friends  the 
best  possible  opportunities    for   killing   largo   numbers   of   ducks   and 


362  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

geese  without  interference.  In  no  sense  whatever  are  they  intended  to 
preserve  or  increase  the  supply  of  wild  fowl.  The  real  object  of  their 
existence  is  duck  and  goose  slaughter.  For  example,  the  worst  goose- 
slaughter  story  on  record  comes  to  us  from  the  grounds  of  the  Glenn 
County  Club  in  California,  whereon,  as  stated  elsewhere,  two  men  armed 
with  automatic  shotguns  killed  218  geese  in  one  hour,  and  bagged  a  total 
of  452  in  one  day. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  give  any  list  of  the  so-called  ducking  "pre- 
serves." The  word  "preserve,"  when  applied  to  them,  is  a  misnomer. 
Thirteen  states  have  these  incorporated  slaughtering-grounds  for  ducks 
and  geese,  the  greatest  number  being  in  California,  Illinois,  North  Caro- 
lina and  Virginia.  California  has  carried  the  ducking-club  idea  to  the 
limit  where  it  is  claimed  that  it  constitutes  an  abuse.  Dr.  Palmer  says 
that  one  or  two  of  the  club  preserves  on  the  western  side  of  the  San 
Joaquin  Valley  contain  upward  of  40  square  miles,  or  25,000  acres  each! 
With  considerable  asperity  it  is  now  publicly  charged  (in  the  columns  of 
The  Examiner  of  San  Francisco)  that  for  the  unattached  sportsmen  there 
is  no  longer  any  duck-shooting  to  be  had  in  California,  because  all  the 
good  ducking-grounds  are  owned  and  exclusively  controlled  by  clubs. 
In  many  states  the  private  game  preserves  are  a  source  of  great  irritation, 
and  many  have  been  attacked  in  courts  of  law.* 

But  I  am  not  sorrowing  over  the  woes  of  the  unattached  duck-hunter, 
or  in  the  least  inclined  to  champion  his  cause  against  the  ducking-club 
member.  As  slaughterers  and  exterminators  of  wild-fowl,  rarely  exer- 
cising mercy  under  ridiculous  bag-limits,  they  have  both  been  too  heedless 
of  the  future,  and  one  is  just  as  bad  for  the  game  as  the  other.  If  either 
of  them  favored  the  game,  I  would  be  on  his  side;  but  I  see  no  difference 
between  them.  They  both  kill  right  up  to  the  bag-limit,  as  often  as  they 
can;   and  that  is  what  is  sweeping  away  all  our  feathered  game. 

Curiously  enough,  the  angry  unattached  duck-hunters  of  California 
are  to-day  proposing  to  have  revenge  on  the  duck-clubbers  by  removing 
all  restrictions  on  the  sale  of  game!  This  is  on  the  theory  that  the  duckless 
sportsmen  of  the  State  of  California  would  like  to  buy  dead  ducks  and 
geese  for  their  tables!  It  is  a  novel  and  original  theory,  but  the  sane 
people  of  California  never  will  enact  it  into  law.  It  would  be  a  step  just 
twenty  years  backward! 

The  Public  vs.  the  Private  Game  Preserve. — Both  the  executive 
and  the  judiciary  branches  of  our  state  governments  will  in  the  future  be 
called  upon  with  increasing  frequency  to  sit  in  judgment  on  this  case. 
Conditions  about  us  are  rapidly  changing.  The  precepts  of  yesterday 
may  be  out  of  date  and  worthless  tomorrow.  By  way  of  introspection, 
let  us  see  what  principles  of  equity  toward  Man  and  Nature  we  would  lay 
down  as  the  basis  of  our  action  if  we  were  called  to  the  bench.  Named 
in  logical  sequence  they  would  be  about  as  follows : 

1.  Any  private  game   "preserve"   that  is   maintained   chiefly  as  a 

"Private  Game  Preserves  and  their  Future  mi  the  United  States,"  hy  T.  R.  Pahner, 
United  vStates  Department  of  Agriculture,  1910. 


PRIVATE   GAMIi   PRESERVES 


363 


EGRETS   AND  HERONS   IN   SANCTUARY  ON   MARSH   ISLAND 


slaughter-ground  for  wild  j^^ame,  either  Ijirds  or  mammals,  may  become 
detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the  people  at  large. 

2.  It  is  not  neeessarily  the  duty  of  any  state  to  provide  for  the  main- 
tenance of  private  death-traps  for  the  wholesale  slaughter  of  migratory 
game. 

3.  x'\n  oppressive  monopoly  in  the  slaughter  of  migratory  game  is 
detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the  public  at  large,  the  same  as  any  other 
mono])oly. 

4.  Every  de  facto  game  preserve,  maintained  for  the  preservation  of 
wild  life  rather  than  for  its  slaughter,  is  an  institution  beneficial  to  the 
public  at  large,  and  therefore  entitled  to  legal  rights  and  privileges  above 
and  beyond  all  which  may  rightly  be  accorded  to  the  so-called  "pre- 
serves" that  are  maintained  as  killing-grounds. 

5.  The  law  may  justly  discriminate  between  the  actual  game  jjreserve 
and  the  mere  killing-ground. 

6.  Whenever  a  killing-ground  becoines  a  public  burden,  it  may  be 
abated,  the  same  as  any  other  public  infliction. 

In  private  game  preserves  the  time  has  arrived  wlien  lawmakers  and 
judges  must  begin  to  apjjly  the  blood-test,  and  separate  the  true  from  the 
false.  And  at  every  step,  the  welfare  of  the  icild  life  involved  must  be 
given  full  consideration.  No  men,  nor  body  of  men,  should  be  permitted 
to  i)ractice  methods  that  spell  extermination. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 
BRITISH  GAME  PRESERVES  IN  AFRICA  AND  AUSTRALIA 

This  brief  chapter  is  offered  as  an  object-lesson  to  the  world  at  large. 

In  the  early  days  of  America,  the  founders  of  our  states  and  territories 
gave  little  heed,  or  none  at  all,  to  the  preservation  of  wild  life.  Even  if 
they  thought  of  that  duty,  undoubtedly  they  felt  that  the  game  would 
always  last,  and  that  they  had  no  time  for  such  sentimental  side  issues 
as  the  making  of  game  preserves.  They  were  coping  with  troubles  and 
perplexities  of  many  kinds,  and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  up  to 
forty  years  ago,  real  game  protection  in  America  went  chiefly  by  default. 

In  South  Africa,  precisely  the  same  conditions  have  prevailed  until 
recent  times.  The  early  colonists  were  kept  so  busy  shooting  lions  and 
making  farms  that  not  one  game  preserve  was  made.  If  any  men  can 
be  excused  from  the  work  and  worry  of  preserving  game,  and  making 
preserves,  it  is  those  who  spend  their  lives  pioneering  and  state-building 
in  countries  like  Africa.  Men  who  continually  have  to  contend  with 
disease,  bad  food,  rains,  insect  pests,  dangerous  wild  beasts  and  native 
cussedness  may  well  claim  that  they  have  troubles  enough,  without  going 
far  into  campaigns  to  preserve  wild  animals  in  countries  where  animals 
are  plentiful  and  cheap.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  people  of  Alaska 
can  not  be  relied  upon  to  preserve  the  Alaskan  game.  They  are  busy 
with  other  things  that  are  of  more  importance  to  them. 

In  May,  1900,  representatives  of  the  great  powers  owning  territory 
in  Africa  held  a  conference  in  the  interests  of  the  wild-animal  life  of  that 
continent.  As  a  result  a  Convention  was  signed  by  which  those  powers 
bound  hemselves  "to  make  provision  for  the  prevention  of  further  undue 
destruction  of  wild  game."  The  principles  laid  down  for  universal 
observance  were  as  follows: 

1.  Sparing  of  females  and  immature  animals. 

2.  The  establishment  of  close  seasons  and  game  sanctuaries. 

3.  Absolute  protection  of  rare  species. 

4.  Restrictions  on  export  for  trading  purposes  of  skins,  horns,  tusks,  etc. 

5.  Prohibition  of  the  use  of  pits,  snares  and  game  traps. 

The 'brave  and  hardy  men  who  are  making  for  the  British  people  a 
grand  empire  in  Africa  probably  are  greater  men  than  far-distant  people 
realize.  To  them,  the  white  man's  burden  of  game  preservation  is 
accepted  as  all  in  the  day's  work.  A  mere  handful  of  British  civil  officers, 
strongly  aided  by  the  Society  for  the  Preservation  of  the  Fauna  of  the 
British  Empire,  have  carved  out  and  set  aside  a  great  chain  of  game 
preserves  reaching  all  the  way  from  Swaziland  and  the  Transvaal  to 
Khartoum.     Taken  either  collectively  or  separately,  it  represents  grand 


BRITISH  CAME  PRESERVES  IN  AFRICA  AND  AUSTRALIA         365 

work,  characteristic  of  the  greatest  colonizers  on  earth.  Those  preserves 
are  worthy  stones  in  the  foundation  of  what  one  day  will  be  a  great 
British  empire  in  Africa.  The  names  of  the  men  who  proposed  them 
and  wrought  them  out  should,  in  some  way,  be  imperishably  connected 
with  them  as  their  founders,  as  the  least  reward  that  Posterity  can  bestow. 

In  Major  J.  Stevenson-Hamilton's  fine  work,  "Animal  Life  in  Africa,"* 
the  author  has  been  at  much  pains  to  publish  an  excellent  series  of  maps 
showing  the  locations  of  the  various  British  game  preserves  in  Africa, 
and  the  map  published  herewith  has  been  based  chiefly  on  that  work. 
It  is  indeed  fortunate  for  the  wild  life  of  Africa  that  it  has  today  so 
powerful  a  champion  and  exponent  as  this  author,  the  warden  of  the 
Transvaal  Game  Preserves. 

Events  move  so  rapidly  that  up  to  this  date  no  one,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware,  has  paused  long  enough  to  make  ana  publish  an  annotated  list 
of  the  African  game  preserves.  Herein  I  have  attempted  to  begin  that 
task  myself,  and  I  regret  that  at  this  distance  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
set  down  under  the  several  titles  the  names  of  the  men  who  made  these 
preserves  possible,  and  actually  founded  them. 

To  thoughtful  Americans  I  particularly  commend  this  list  as  a  showing 
of  the  work  of  men  who  have  not  waited  until  the  game  had  been  prac- 
tically exterminated  before  creating  sanctuaries  in  which  to  preserve  it. 
In  view  of  these  results,  how  trivial  and  small  of  soul  seems  the  mercenary 
efforts  of  the  organized  wool-growers  of  Montana  to  thwart  our  plan 
to  secure  a  paltry  fifteen  square  miles  of  grass  lands  for  the  rugged  and 
arid  Snow  Creek  Antelope  Preserve  that  is  intended  to  help  save  a 
valuable  species  from  quick  extermination. 

At  this  point  I  must  quote  the  views  of  a  high  authority  on  the  status 
of  wild  life  and  game  preserves  in  Africa.  The  following  is  from  Major 
Stevenson-Hamilton's  book. 

"It  is  a  remarkable  phenomenon  in  human  aftairs  how  seldom  the 
experience  of  others  seems  to  turn  the  scale  of  action.  There  are,  I  take 
it,  very  few  farmers,  in  the  Cape  Colony,  the  Orange  Free  State,  or  the 
Transvaal,  who  woidd  not  be  glad  to  see  an  adequate  supply  of  game 
upon  their  land.  Indeed,  the  writer  is  constantly  dealing  with  applica- 
tions as  to  the  possibility  of  reintroducing  various  species  from  the  game 
reserves  to  private  farms,  and  only  the  question  of  expense  and  the 
difficulty  of  transport  have,  up  to  the  present,  prevented  this  being  done 
on  a  considerable  scale.  When,  therefore,  the  relatively  small  populations 
of  such  protectorates  as  are  still  well  stocked  with  game  are  heard  airily 
discussing  the  advisability  of  getting  rid  of  it  as  quickly  as  possible,  one 
realizes  how  often  vain  are  the  teachings  of  history,  and  how  well-nigh 
hopeless  it  is  to  quote  the  result  of  similar  action  elsewhere.  It  remains 
only  to  trust  that  things  may  be  seen  in  truer  perspective  ere  it  is  too  late, 
and  that  those  in  whose  temporary  charge  it  is  may  not  cast  recklessly 
away  one  of  nature's  most  splendid  assets,  one,  moreover,  which  one 3 
lightly  discarded,  can  never  by  any  possibility,  be  regained. 

♦Published  by  Heineniaiin,  London,  1912. 


366 


OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 


THE  MOST    IMPORTANT  GAME    PRESERVES  OF  AFRICA 
The  Numbers  Refer  to  Corresponding   Numbers  in  the  Text 

"It  is  idle  to  say  that  the  advance  of  civiHzation  must  necessarily 
mean  the  total  disappearance  of  all  wild  animals.  This  is  one  of  those 
glib  fallacies  which  flows  only  too  readily  from  unthinking  hps.  Civili- 
zation in  its  full  sense — not  the  advent  of  a  few  scattered  pioneers — of 
course,  implies  their  restriction,  especially  as  regards  purely  grass- 
feeding  species,  within  certain  definite  bounds,  both  as  regards  numbers 
and  sanctuaries.  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  wholesale 
destruction,  that  a  few  more  or  less  deserving  individuals  may  receive 
some  small  pecuniary  benefit,  or  gratify  their  taste  for  slaughter  to  the 
detriment  of  everyone  else  who  may  come  after.  The  fauna  of  an  empire 
is  the  property  of  that  etnpire  as  a  whole,  and  not  of  the  small  portion  of  it 
where  the  animals  may  happen  to  exist;  and  while  full  justice  and  encourage- 
ment must  he  given  to  the  farmer  and  pioneer,  neither  should  he  permitted 
to  entirely  demolish  for  his  own  advantage  resources  which,  strictly  speaking, 
are  not  his  own.'" — ("Animal  Life  in  Africa,"  p.  24.) 


BRITISH  GAME  PRESERVES  IN  AFRICA   AND  A  USTRALIA  3G7 

African  Game   Preserves 

British  East  Africa: 

1.*  The  Athi  Plains  Preserve. — This  is  situated  between  the  Uganda 
Railway  and  the  boundary  of  German  East  Africa.  Its  northern  bound- 
ary is  one  mile  north  of  the  railway  track.  It  is  about  215  miles  long  east 
and  west  by  105  miles  from  north  to  south,  and  its  area  is  about  13,000 
square  miles.  It  is  truly  a  great  preserve,  and  worthy  of  the  plains  fauna 
that  it  is  specially  intended  to  perpetuate. 

2.  The  Jubaland  Preserve. — This  preserve  lies  northwest  of  Mount 
Kenia.  Its  southwestern  corner  is  near  Lake  Baringo,  the  Laikipia 
Escarpment  is  its  western  boundary  up  to  Mt.  Nyiro,  and  from  that  point 
its  northern  boundary  runs  225  miles  to  Marsabit  Lake.  From  that 
point  the  boundary  runs  south-by-west  to  the  Guaso  Nyiro  River,  which 
forms  the  eastern  half  of  the  southern  boundary.  Its  total  area  appears 
to  be  about  13,000  square  miles. 

In  addition  to  the  two  great  preserves  described  above  the  government 
of  British  East  Africa  has  established  on  the  Uasin  Gishu  Plateau  a  cen- 
trally located  sanctuary  for  elands,  roan  antelopes  and  hippopotamii. 
There  is  also  a  small  special  rhinoceros  preserve  about  fifty  miles  south- 
eastward of  Nairobi,  around  Kiu  station,  on  the  railway. 

Egyptian  Sudan: 

3.  A  great  nameless  sanctuary  for  wild  life  exists  on  the  eastern  bank 
of  the  Nile,  comprising  the  whole  territory  between  the  main  stream, 
the  Blue  Nile  and  Abyssinia.  Its  length  (north  and  south)  is  215  miles, 
and  its  width  is  about  125  miles;  which  means  a  total  area  of  about 
26,875  square  miles.  Natives  and  others  hving  within  this  sanctuary 
may  hunt  therein — if  they  can  procure  licenses. 

Somaliland: 

4.  Hargeis  Reserve,  about  1,800  square  miles. 

5.  Mirso  Reserve,  about  300  square  miles. 

Uganda: 

6.  Budonga  Forest  Reserve. — This  small  reserve  cml)races  the  whole 
eastern  shore  and  hinterland  of  Lake  Albert  Nyanza.  and  is  shaped  like 
a  new  moon. 

7.  Toro  Reserve. — This  small  reserve  lies  between  Lakes  Albert 
Nyanza  and  Albert  Edward  Nyanza,  touching  both. 

Nyasaland,  or  the  British  Central  Africa  Protectorate. — A 
small  territory,  but  remarkably  well  stocked  with  game. 

8.  Elephant  Marsh  Preserve. — A  small  area  in  the  extreme  southern 
end  of  the  Protectorate,  on  both  sides  of  the  Shire  River,  chiefly  for  buffalo. 

9.  Angoniland  Reserve. — This  was  created  especially  to  preserve 
about  one  thousand  elephants.  It  is  forty  miles  west  of  the  south- 
western arm  of  Lake  Nyasa. 

♦These  numbers  refer  to  corresponding  iiunil)ers  on  tlu-  map  of  Africa. 


368  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

Transvaal  : 

10.  Sahi-Singwitza-Pongola  Preserve. — This  great  preserve  occupies 
the  whole  region  between  the  Drakenberg  Mountains  and  the  Lebombo 
Hills.  Its  total  area  is  about  10,500  square  miles.  It  lies  in  a  compact 
block  about  210  miles  long  by  50  miles  wide,  along  the  Portuguese 
border. 

11.  Rustenburg  Reserve. — This  is  situated  at  the  head  of  the  Limpopo 
River,  and  covers  about  3,500  square  miles. 

Swaziland: 

12.  The  Swaziland  Reserve  contains  about  1,750  square  miles,  and 
occupies  the  southwestern  corner  of  Swaziland. 

Rhodesia: 

13.  The  Nvueru  Marsh  Game  Reserve  is  in  northwestern  Rhodesia, 
bordering  the  Congo  Free  State.  The  description  of  its  local  boundaries 
is  quite  unintelligible  outside  of  Rhodesia. 

Luangwa  Reserve. — The  locality  of  this  reserve  cannot  be  determined 
from  the  official  description,  which  gives  no  clue  to  its  shape  or  size. 

Game  Preserves  in  Australasia 
New  Zealand: 

Little  Barrier  Island  in  the  north,  and  Resolution  Island,  m  the  south; 
and  concerning  both,  details  are  lacking. 

Australia: 

Kangaroo  Island,  near  Adelaide,  South  Australia,  is  400  miles  north- 
west of  Melbourne.  Of  the  total  area  of  this  rather  large  island  of  300 
square  miles,  140  square  miles  have  been  set  aside  as  a  game  preserve, 
chiefly  for  the  preservation  of  the  mallee  bird  (Lipoa  occelata).  It  is 
believed  that  eventually  the  whole  island  will  become  a  wild-life  sanctuary, 
and  it  would  seem  that  this  can  not  be  consummated  a  day  too  soon  for 
the  vanishing  wild  life. 

Wilson  s  Promontory,  Adelaide,  is  a  peninsula  well  suited  to  the 
preservation  of  wild  life,  especially  birds,  and  it  is  now  a  sanctuary. 

Many  private  bird  refuges  have  been  created  in  Australia. 
Tasmania: 

Eleven  Bird  Refuges  have  been  created,  with  a  total  area  of  26,000 
acres, — an  excellent  record  for  Tasmania! 

Freycinefs  Peninsula. — At  present  this  wild-life  sanctuary  is  not 
adequately  protected  from  illicit  hunting  and  trapping;  but  its  full 
protection  is  now  demanded,  and  no  doubt  this  soon  will  be  provided 
by  the  government.  I  am  informed  that  this  offers  a  golden  opportunity 
to  secure  a  fine  wild-life  sanctuary  at  ridiculously  small  cost  to  the  public. 
The  whole  world  is  interested  in  the  preservation  of  the  remarkable 
fauna  of  Tasmania.  The  extermination  of  the  thylacirle  would  be  a 
zoological  calamity;   but  it  is  impending. 


CHAPTER  XL 
BREEDING    GAME    AND    FUR    IN    CAPTIVITY 

Game  Breeding. — The  breeding  of  game  in  captivity  for  sale  in  the 
markets  of  the  world  is  just  as  legitimate  as  the  breeding  of  domestic 
species.  This  applies  equally  to  mammals,  birds,  reptiles  and  fishes. 
It  is  the  duty  of  the  nation  and  the  state  to  foster  such  industries  and 
facilitate  the  marketing  of  their  products  without  any  unnecessary 
formalities,  delays  or  losses  to  producers  or  to  purchasers. 

Already  this  principle  has  been  established  in  several  states.  Without 
going  into  the  records,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  Colorado  was  the  pioneer  in 
the  so-called  "more-game"  movement,  about  1899;  but  there  is  one 
person  who  would  like  to  have  the  world  believe  that  it  started  in  the 
state  of  New  York,  about  1909.  The  idea  is  not  quite  as  "old  as  the 
hills,"  but  the  application  of  it  in  the  United  States  dates  back  through  a 
considerable  vista  of  years. 

The  laws  of  Colorado  providing  for  the  creation  of  private  game 
preserves  and  the  marketing  of  their  product  under  a  tagging  system, 
are  very  elaborate,  and  they  show  a  sincere  desire  to  foster  an  industry 
as  yet  but  slightly  developed  in  this  country.  The  laws  of  New  York  are 
much  more  simple  and  easy  to  understand  than  those  of  Colorado. 

There  is  one  important  principle  now  fully  recognized  in  the  New 
York  laws  for  game  breeding  that  other  states  will  do  well  to  adopt.  It 
is  the  fact  that  certain  kinds  of  wild  game  can  not  be  bred  and  reared  in 
captivity  on  a  commercial  basis;  and  this  being  true,  it  is  clearly  against 
public  policy  to  provide  for  the  sale  of  any  such  species.  Why  provide 
for  the  sale  of  preserve-bred  grouse  and  ducks  which  we  know  can  not  be 
bred  and  reared  in  confinement  in  marketable  numbers?  For  example, 
if  we  may  judge  by  the  numerous  experiments  that  thus  far  have  been 
made, — as  we  certainly  have  a  right  to  do, — no  man  can  successfully 
breed  and  rear  in  captivity,  on  a  commercial  basis,  the  canvasback  duck, 
teal,  ]3intail  duck,  ruffed  grouse  or  quail.  This  being  the  case,  no  amount 
of  clamor  from  game  dealers  and  their  allies  ever  should  induce  any  state 
legislature  to  provide  for  the  sale  of  any  of  those  species  until  it  has  been 
fully  demonstrated  that  they  have  been  and  can  be  bred  in  captivity  in  large 
numbers.  The  moment  the  markets  of  a  state  are  thrown  open  to  these 
impossible  species,  from  that  moment  the  state  game  wardens  must  make 
a  continuous  struggle  to  prevent  the  importation  and  sale  of  those  birds 
contrary  to  law.  This  proposition  is  so  simple  that  every  honest  man 
can  see  it. 

All  that  any  state  legislature  may  rightfully  be  asked   to  do  is  to 


370  OUR    VANISHING    WILD   LIFE 

provide  for  the  sale,  under  tags,  of  those  species  which  we  know  can  be 
bred  in  captivity  in  large  numbers. 

When  the  Bayne  law  was  drafted,  its  authors  considered  with  the 
utmost  care  the  possibilities  in  the  breeding  of  game  in  the  United  States 
on  a  commercial  basis.  It  was  found  that  as  yet  only  two  wild  native 
species  have  been,  and  can  be,  reared  in  captivity  on  a  large  scale.  These 
are  the  white-tailed  deer  and  mallard  duck.  Of  foreign  species  we  can 
breed  successfully  for  market  the  fallow  deer,  red  deer  of  Europe  and  some 
of  the  pheasants  of  the  old  world.  For  the  rearing,  killing  and  marketing 
of  all  these,  the  Bayne  law  provides  the  simplest  processes  of  state  super- 
vision that  the  best  game  protectors  and  game  breeders  of  New  York 
could  devise.  The  tagging  system  is  expeditious,  cheap  and  effective. 
Practically  the  only  real  concession  that  is  required  of  the  game-breeder 
concerns  the  killing,  which  must  be  done  in  a  systematic  way,  whereby 
a  state  game  warden  can  visit  the  breeder's  premises  and  affix  the  tags 
without  any  serious  sacrifice  of  time  or  convenience  on  either  side.  The 
tags  cost  the  breeder  five  cents  each,  and  they  pay  the  cost  of  the  services 
rendered  by  the  state. 

By  this  admirable  system,  which  is  very  plainly  set  forth  in  the  New 
York  Conservation  Commission's  book  of  game  laws,  all  the  wild  game 
of  New  York,  and  of  every  other  state,  is  absolutely  protected  at  all  times 
against  illegal  killing  and  illegal  importation  for  the  New  York  market. 
Now,  is  it  not  the  duty  of  Connecticut,  Maryland,  Virginia,  the  Carolinas 
and  every  other  state  to  return  our  compliment  by  passing  similar  laws  ? 
Massachusetts  came  up  to  public  expectations  at  the  next  session  of  her 
legislature  after  the  passage  of  our  Bayne  law.  In  1913,  California  will 
try  to  secure  a  similar  act;  and  we  know  full  well  that  her  ducks,  geese, 
quail,  grouse  and  band-tailed  pigeon  need  it  very  much.  If  the  California 
protectors  of  wild  life  succeed  in  arousing  the  great  quiet  inass  of  people 
in  that  state,  their  Bayne  bill  will  be  swept  through  their  legislature  on  a 
tidal  wave  of  popular  sentiment. 

Elk. — For  people  who  own  wild  woodlands  near  large  cities  there  are 
good  profits  to  be  made  in  rearing  white-tailed  deer  for  the  market.  I 
would  also  mention  elk,  but  for  the  fact  that  every  man  who  rears  a  fine 
herd  of  elk  quickly  becomes  so  proud  of  the  animals,  and  so  much  at- 
tached to  them,  that  he  can  not  bear  to  have  them  shot  and  butchered 
for  market!  Elk  are  just  as  easy  to  breed  and  rear  as  domestic  cattle, 
except  that  in  the  fall  breeding  season,  the  fighting  of  rival  bulls  demands 
careful  and  intelligent  management.  Concerning  the  possibilities  of 
feeding  elk  on  hay  at  $25  per  ton  and  declaring  an  annual  profit,  I  am 
not  informed.  If  the  elk  require  to  be  fed  all  the  year  round,  the  high 
price  of  hay  and  grain  might  easily  render  it  impossible  to  Droduce  market- 
able three-year-old  animals  at  a  profit. 

White-tailed  Deer. — Any  one  who  owns  from  one  hundred  to  one 
thousand  acres  of  wild,  brushy  or  forest-covered  land  can  raise  white- 
tailed  (or  Virginia)  deer  at  a  profit.  With  smaller  areas  of  land,  free 
range   becomes   impossible,    and    the    prospects   of   commercial    profits 


BREEDING  GAME  AND    FUR   IN   CAPTIVITY  371 

diminish  and  disappear.  In  any  event,  a  fenced  range  is  absolutely 
essential;  and  the  best  fence  is  the  Page,  88  inches  high,  all  horizontals 
of  No.  9  wire,  top  and  bottom  wires  of  No.  7,  and  the  perpendicular  tie- 
wires  of  No.  12.  This  fence  will  hold  deer,  elk,  bison  and  wild  horses. 
In  large  enclosures,  the  white-tailed  deer  is  hardy  and  prolific,  and  when 
fairly  cooked  its  flesh  is  a  great  delicacy.  In  Vermont  the  average 
weights  of  the  deer  killed  in  that  state  in  various  years  have  been  as  fol- 
low:—in  1902,  171  lbs.;  in  1903,  190  lbs.;  in  1905,  198  lbs.;  in  1906,  200 
lbs.;  in  1907,  196  lbs.;  in  1908,  207  lbs.;  and  in  1909,  155  lbs.  The  rea- 
son for  the  great  drop  in  1909  is  yet  to  be  ascertained. 

In  1910,  in  New  York  City  the  wholesale  price  of  whole  deer  carcasses 
was  from  22  to  25  cents  per  pound.  Venison  saddles  were  worth  from 
30  to  35  cents  per  pound.  On  the  bill  of  fare  of  a  first  class  hotel,  a  portion 
of  venison  costs  from  $1.50  to  $2.50  according?;  to  the  diner's  location. 
It  is  probable  that  such  prices  as  these  will  prevail  only  in  the  largest 
cities,  and  therefore  they  must  not  be  regarded  as  general. 

Live  white-tailed  deer  can  be  purchased  for  breeding  purposes  at 
prices  ranging  from  $25  to  $35  each.  A  good  eastern  source  of  supply  is 
Blue  Mountain  Forest,  Mr.  Austin  Corbin,  president  (Broadway  and 
Cortlandt  St.,  New  York).  In  the  West,  good  stock  can  be  procured 
from  the  Cleveland-Cliffs  Iron  Company,  through  C.  V.  R.  Townsend, 
Negaunee,  Mich,  whose  preserve  occupies  the  whole  of  Grand  Island, 
Lake  Superior. 

The  Department  of  Agriculture  has  published  for  free  distribution  a 
pamphlet  entitled  "Raising  Deer  and  Other  Large  Game  Animals"  in 
the  United  States,  by  David  E.  Lantz,  which  contains  much  valuable 
information,  although  it  leaves  much  unsaid. 

All  breeders  of  deer  are  cautioned  that  during  the  fall  and  early  winter 
months,  all  adult  white-tailed  bucks  are  dangerous  to  man,  and  should 
be  treated  accordingly.  A  measure  of  safety  can  be  secured  in  a  large 
park  by  compelling  the  deer  always  to  keep  at  a  respectful  distance,  and 
making  no  "pets,"  whatever.  Whenever  a  buck  finds  his  horns  and  loses 
his  fear  of  man,  climb  the  fence  quickly.  Bucks  in  the  rutting  season 
sometimes  seem  to  go  crazy,  and  often  they  attack  men,  wantonly  and 
dangerously.  The  method  of  attack  is  to  an  unarmed  man  almost  irre- 
sistible. The  animal  lowers  his  head,  stiffens  his  neck  and  with  terrible 
force  drives  straight  forward  for  your  stomach  and  bowels.  Usually 
there  are  eight  sharp  spears  of  bone  to  impale  you.  The  best  defense 
of  an  unarmed  man  is  to  seize  the  left  antler  with  the  left  hand,  and  with 
the  right  hand  pull  the  deer's  right  front  foot  from  under  him.  Merely 
holding  to  the  horns  makes  great  sport  for  the  deer.  He  loves  that  un- 
equal combat.  The  great  desideratum  is  to  put  his  fore  legs  out  of 
commission,  and  get  him  down  on  his  knees. 

Does  are  sometimes  dangerous,  and  inflict  serious  damage  by  rising 
on  their  hind  feet  and  viciously  striking  with  their  sharp  front  hoofs. 
These  tendencies  in  American  deer  are  mentioned  here  as  a  duty  to  per- 
sons who  ma}'  de.sire  to  breed  deer  for  profit. 


372  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

The  Red  Deer  of  Europe. — Anyone  who  has  plenty  of  natural 
forest  food  for  deer  and  a  good  market  within  fair  range,  may  find  the 
European  red  deer  a  desirable  species.  It  is  of  size  smaller,  and  more 
easily  managed,  than  the  wapiti;  and  is  more  easily  marketed  because 
of  its  smaller  size.  As  a  species  it  is  hardy  and  prolific,  and  of  course 
its  venison  is  as  good  as  that  of  any  other  deer.  Live  specimens  for  stock- 
ing purposes  can  be  purchased  of  S.  A.  Stephan,  Agent  for  Carl  Hagen- 
beck,  Cincinnati  Zoological  Gardens,  or  of  Wenz  &  Mackensen,  Yard- 
ley,  Pa.,  at  prices  ranging  from  $60  to  $100  each,  according  to  size 
and  age.  At  present  the  supply  of  specimens  in  this  country  on  hand 
for  sale  is  very  small. 

The  Fallow  Deer. — This  species  is  the  most  universal  park  deer  of 
Europe.  It  seems  to  be  invulnerable  to  neglect  and  misuse,  for  it  has 
persisted  through  countless  generations  of  breeding  in  captivity,  and 
the  abuse  of  all  nations.  In  size  it  is  a  trifie  smaller  than  our  white- 
tailed  deer,  with  spots  in  summer,  and  horns  that  are  widely  flattened 
at  the  extremities  in  a  very  interesting  way.  It  is  very  hardy  and  prolific, 
but  of  course  it  can  not  stand  everything  that  could  be  put  upon  it.  It 
needs  a  dry  shed  in  winter,  red  clover  hay  and  crushed  oats  for  winter 
food;  and  no  deer  should  be  kept  in  mud.  As  a  commercial  proposition 
it  is  not  so  meaty  as  the  white-tail,  but  it  is  less  troublesome  to  keep.  The 
adult  males  are  not  such  vicious  or  dangerous  fighters  as  white-tail 
bucks.  Live  specimens  are  worth  from  $50  to  $75.  The  Essex  County 
Park  Commissioners  (Orange,  New  Jersey)  have  had  excellent  success 
with  this  species.  In  1906  they  purchased  twenty-five  does  and  four 
bucks  and  placed  them  in  an  enclosure  of  150  acres,  on  a  wooded  moun- 
tain-side. In  1912  they  had  150  deer,  and  were  obliged  to  take  measures 
for  a  disposal  of  the  surplus.  Messrs.  Wenz  &  Mackensen,  keep  an 
almost  continuous  supply  of  fallow  deer  on  hand  for  sale. 

The  Indian  Sambar  Deer. — I  have  long  advocated  the  introduction 
in  the  southern  states,  wherever  deer  can  he  protected,  of  this  great,  hulking, 
animated  venison-factory.  While  I  have  not  delved  deeply  into  the 
subject  of  weight  and  growth,  I  feel  sure  from  casual  observations  of  the 
growth  of  about  twenty-five  animals  that  this  species  produces  more 
venison  during  the  first  two  years  of  its  life  than  any  other  deer  with 
which  I  am  acquainted.  I  regard  it  as  the  greatest  venison-producer 
of  the  whole  Deer  Family;  and  I  know  that  is  a  large  order.  The  size 
of  a  yearling  is  almost  absurd,  it  is  so  great  for  an  animal  of  tender  years. 
When  adult,  the  species  is  for  its  height  very  large  and  heavy.  As  a 
food-producing  animal,  located  in  the  southern  hill  forests  and  taking 
care  of  itself,  "there's  millions  in  it!"  But  it  must  be  kept  under  fence; 
for  in  no  southern  (or  northern)  state  would  any  such  mass  of  juicy  wild 
meat  long  be  permitted  to  roam  at  large  unkilled.  Through  this  species 
I  believe  that  a  million  acres  of  southern  timber  lands,  now  useless  except 
for  timber  growth,  could  be  made  very  productive  in  choice  venison. 
The  price  woiild  be, — a  good  fence,  and  protection  from  poachers. 

The  Indian  sambar  deer  looks  like  a  short-legged  big-bodied  under- 
study of  our  American  elk.     It  breeds  well  in  captivity,  and  it  is  of  quiet 


BREEDING  GAME  AND   FUR   IN   CAPTIVITY  373 

and  tractable  disposition.  It  can  not  live  in  a  country  where  the  tem- 
perature goes  down  to  25°  F.  and  remains  there  for  long  periods.  It  would, 
I  am  firmly  convinced,  do  well  all  along  the  Gulf  coast,  and  if  acclimatized 
along  the  Gulf,  with  the  lapse  of  time  and  generations  it  would  become 
more  and  more  hardy,  grow  more  hair,  and  push  its  way  northward, 
until  it  reached  the  latitude  of  Tennessee.  But  then,  in  a  wild  state  it 
could  not  be  protected  from  poachers.  As  stated  elsewhere.  Dr.  Ray  V. 
Pierce  has  successfully  acclimatized  and  bred  this  species  in  his  St. 
Vincent  Island  game  preserve,  near  Apalachicola,  Florida.  More 
than  that,  the  species  has  crossed  with  the  white-tailed  deer  of  the 
Island. 

Living  specimen  of  the  Indian  Sambar  deer  are  worth  from  $125  to 
$250,  according  to  size  and  other  conditions.  Just  at  present  it  seems 
difficult  for  Americans  to  procure  a  sufficient  number  of  males!  We 
have  had  very  bad  luck  with  several  males  that  we  attempted  to  im- 
port for  breeding  purposes. 

The  Mallard  Duck. — A  great  many  persons  have  made  pensistent 
attempts  to  breed  the  canvasback,  redhead,  mallard,  black  duck,  pintail, 
teal  and  other  species,  on  a  commercial  basis.  So  far  as  I  am  aware  the 
mallard  is  the  only  wild  duck  that  has  been  bred  in  sufficient  numbers 
to  slaughter  for  the  markets.  The  wood  duck  and  mandarin  can  be  bred 
in  fair  numbers,  but  only  sufficient  to  supply  the  demand  for  living  birds, 
for  park  purposes.  One  would  naturally  suppose  that  a  species  as  closely 
allied  to  the  mallard  as  the  black  duck  is  known  to  be,  would  breed  like 
the  mallard;  but  the  black  duck  is  so  timid  and  nervous  about  nesting 
as  to  be  almost  worthless  in  captivity.  All  the  species  named  above, 
except  the  mallard,  must  at  present,  and  in  general,  be  regarded  as 
failures  in  breeding  for  the  market. 

Of  all  American  ducks  the  common  mallard  is  the  most  persistent 
and  successful  breeder.  It  quickly  becomes  accustomed  to  captivity,  it 
enjoys  park  life,  and  when  given  even  half  a  chance  it  will  breed  and 
rear  its  young. 

Unquestionably,  the  mallard  duck  can  be  reared  in  captivity  in 
numbers  limited  only  by  the  extent  of  breeder's  facilities.  The  amount 
of  net  profit  that  can  be  realized  depends  wholly  upon  the  business  acu- 
men and  judgment  displayed  in  the  management  of  the  flock.  The  total 
amount  of  knowledge  necessary  to  success  is  not  so  very  great,  but  at 
the  same  time,  the  exercise  of  a  fair  amount  of  intelligence,  and  also 
careful  diligence,  is  absolutely  necessary.  Naturally  the  care  and  food 
of  the  flock  must  not  cost  extravagantly,  or  the  profits  will  inevitably 
disappear. 

As  a  contribution  to  the  cause  of  game-breeding  for  the  inarket,  and 
the  creation  of  a  new  industry  of  value,  Mr.  L.  S.  Crandall  and  the 
author  wrote  for  the  New  York  State  Conservation  Commission  a 
pamphlet  on  "Breeding  Mallard  Ducks  for  Market."  Copies  of  it  can 
be  procured  of  our  State  Conservation  Commission  at  Albany,  by 
enclosing  ten  cents  in  stamps. 


374  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Breeding  Fur-Bearing  Animals 

When  hundreds  of  persons  wrote  to  me  asking  for  hterature  on  the 
breeding  of  fur-bearing  animals  for  profit,  for  ten  years  I  was  compelled 
to  tell  them  that  there  was  no  such  literature.  During  the  past  three 
years  a  few  offerings  have  been  made,  and  I  lose  not  a  moment  in  listing 
them  here. 

''Life  Histories  of  Northern  /inmials,  by  Ernest  T.  Seton  (Charles 
Scribner's  Sons,  2  volumes,  $18),  contains  carefully  written  and  valuable 
chapters  on  fox  farming,  skunk  farming,  marten  farming,  and  mink 
farming,  and  other  valuable  life  histories  of  the  fur-bearing  animals  of 
North  America. 

Rod  and  Gun  in  Canada,  a  magazine  for  sportsmen  published  by 
W.  J.  Taylor,  Woodstock,  Ontario,  contained  in  1912  a  series  of  articles 
on  ''The  Culture  of  Black  and  Silver  Foxes,"  by  R.  B.  and  L.  V.  Croft. 
Country  Life  in  America  has  published  a  number  of  illustrated  articles 
on  fox  and  skunk  farming. 

With  its  usual  enterprise  and  forethought,  the  Biological  Survey  of 
the  Department  of  Agriculture  has  published  a  valuable  pamphlet  of 
22  pages  on  "Silver  Fox  Farming,"  by  Wilfred  H.  Osgood,  copies  of 
which  can  be  procured  by  addressing  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture.  In 
consulting  that  contribution,  however,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that 
just  now,  in  fox  farming,  history  is  being  made  more  rapidly  than  here- 
tofore. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  above  are  the  only  sources  of  informa- 
tion on  fur-farming  for  profit,  but  they  are  the  ones  that  have  most 
impressed  me.  The  files  of  all  the  journals  and  magazines  for  sportsmen 
contain  numerous  articles  on  this  subject,  and  they  should  be  carefully 
consulted. 

Black-Fox  Farming. — The  ridiculous  prices  now  being  paid  in  Lon- 
don for  the  skins  of  black  or  ' '  silver ' '  foxes  has  created  in  this  country  a 
small  furore  over  the  breeding  of  that  color-phase  of  the  red  fox.  The 
prices  that  actually  have  been  obtained,  both  for  skins  and  for  live 
animals  for  breeding  purposes,  have  a  strong  tendency  to  make  people 
crazy.  Fancy  paying  $12,000  in  real  money  for  one  pair  of  live  black 
foxes!  That  has  been  done,  on  Prince  Edward  Island,  and  $10,000  per 
pair  is  now  regarded  as  a  bargain-counter  figure. 

On  Prince  Edward  Island,  in  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  black-fox 
breeding  has  been  going  on  for  ten  years,  and  is  now  on  a  successful  basis. 
One  man  has  made  a  fortune  in  the  business,  and  it  is  rumored  that  a 
stock  company  is  considering  the  purchase  of  his  ten-acre  fox  ranch  at 
a  fabulous  figure.  The  enormous  prices  obtainable  for  live  black  foxes, 
male  or  female,  make  diamonds  and  rubies  seem  cheap  and  common- 
place; and  it  is  no  wonder  that  enterprising  men  are  tempted  to  enter 
that  industry. 

The  price  of  a  black  fox  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  a  recklessly  ex- 
travagant and  whimsical  age.    All  the  fur-wearing  world  knows  very  well 


BREEDING  GAME    AND    FUR  IN   CAPTIVITY  375 

that  fox  fur  is  one  of  the  poorest  of  furs  to  withstand  the  wear  and  tear 
of  actual  use.  About  two  seasons'  hard  wear  are  enough  to  put  the  best 
fox  skin  on  the  wane,  and  three  or  four  can  be  guaranteed  to  throw  it  into 
the  discard.  Even  the  finest  black  fox  skin  is  nothing  superlatively 
beautiful!  A  choice  "cross"  fox  skin  costing  only  $50  is /ar  more  beauti- 
ful, as  a  color  proposition;  but  London  joyously  pays  $2,500  or  $3,000 
for  a  single  black-fox  skin,  to  wear! 

Of  course,  all  such  fads  as  this  are  as  ephemeral  as  the  butterflies  of 
summer.  The  Russo-Japanese  war  quickly  reduced  the  value  of  Alaskan 
blue  foxes  from  $30  to  $18;  and  away  went  the  Alaskan  fox  farms!  A 
similar  twist  of  Fortune's  fickle  wheel  may  in  any  year  send  the  black  fox 
out  of  royal  favor,  and  remove  the  bottom  from  the  business  of  producing 
it.  Let  us  hope,  however,  that  the  craze  for  that  fur  will  continue;  for 
we  like  to  see  our  friends  and  neighbors  make  good  profits. 

Pheasant  Rearing. — This  subject  is  so  well  understood  by  game- 
breeders,  and  there  is  already  so  much  good  literature  available  regarding 
it,  it  is  not  necessary  that  I  should  take  it  up  here. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

TEACHING  WILD  LIFE  PROTECTION  TO  THE  YOUNG 

Thousands  of  busy  and  burdened  men  and  women  are  to-day  striving 
hard,  early  and  late,  to  promote  measures  that  will  preserve  the  valuable 
wild  life  of  the  world.  They  desire  to  leave  to  the  boys  and  girls  of  to- 
morrow a  good  showing  of  the  marvelous  bird  and  animal  forms  that 
make  the  world  beautiful  and  interesting.  They  are  acting  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  the  wild  life  of  to-day  is  not  ours,  to  destroy  or  to  keep  as  we 
choose,  but  has  been  given  to  us  in  trust,  partly  for  our  benefit  and  partly 
for  those  who  come  after  us  and  audit  our  accounts.  They  believe  that 
we  have  no  right  to  squander  and  destroy  a  wild-life  heritage  of  priceless 
value  which  we  have  done  nothing  to  create,  and  which  is  not  ours  to 
destroy. 

Duty  of  Parents. — This  being  the  case,  it  is  very  necessary  that  the 
young  people  of  to-day  should  be  taught,  early  and  often,  the  virtue  and 
the  necessity  of  wild-life  protection.  There  is  no  reason  that  the  boy  of 
to-day  should  not  take  up  his  share  of  the  common  burden,  just  as  soon 
as  he  is  old  enough  to  wander  alone  through  the  woods.  Let  him  be 
taught  in  precise  terms  that  he  must  not  rob  birds'  nests,  and  that  he  must 
not  shoot  song-birds,  woodpeckers  and  kingfishers  with  a  22-calibre  rifle, 
or  any  other  gun.  At  this  moment  there  lies  upon  my  side  table  a  vicious 
little  22-calibre  rifle  that  was  taken  from  two  boys  who  were  camping 
in  the  woods  of  Connecticut,  and  amusing  themselves  by  shooting  val- 
uable insectivorous  birds.  Now  those  boys  were  not  wholly  to  blame 
for  what  they  were  doing;  but  their  fathers  and  mothers  were  very  much 
to  blame!  They  should  have  been  taught  at  the  parental  knee  that  it  is 
very  wrong  to  kill  any  bird  except  a  genuine  game  bird,  and  then  only 
in  the  lawful  open  season.  Those  two  fathers  paid  $10  each  for  having 
failed  in  their  duty;  and  it  served  them  right;  for  they  were  the  real 
culprits. 

Small-calibre  rifles  are  becoming  alarmingly  common  in  the  hands  of 
boys.  Parents  must  do  their  duty  in  the  training  of  their  boys  against 
bird-shooting!  It  is  a  very  serious  matter.  A  million  boys  who  roam  the 
fields  with  small  rifles  without  having  been  instructed  in  protection,  can 
destroy,  an  appalling  number  of  valuable  birds  in  the  course  of  a  year. 
Some  parents  are  so  slavishly  devoted  to  their  children  that  they  wish 
them  to  do  everything  they  please,  and  be  checked  in  nothing.  Such 
parents  constitute  one  of  the  pests  of  society,  and  a  drag  upon  the  happi- 
ness of  their  own  children !  It  is  now  the  bounden  duty  of  each  parent  to 
teach  each  one  of  his  or  her  children  that  the  time  has  come  when  the 


TEACHING  WILD  LIFE  PROTECTION  TO  THE  YOUNG  'ill 

resources  of  nature,  and  especially  wild  life,  must  be  conserved.  To  per- 
mit boys  to  grow  up  and  acquire  <:^ns  without  this  knowledge  is  very 
WTong. 

The  Duty  of  Teachers  and  Schools. — A  great  deal  of  "nature 
study"  is  being  taught  in  the  public  schools  of  the  United  States.  That 
the  young  people  of  our  land  should  be  taught  to  appreciate  the  works  of 
nature,  and  especially  animal  life  and  plant  life,  is  very  desirable.  Thus 
far,  however,  there  is  a  screw  loose  in  the  system,  and  that  is  the  shortage 
in  definite,  positive  instruction  regarding  individual  duty  toward  the  wild 
creatures,  great  and  small.  Along  with  their  nature  studies  all  our  school 
children  should  be  taught,  in  the  imperative  mood: 

1.  That  it  is  wrong  to  disturb  breeding  birds,  or  rob  birds'  nests; 

2.  That  it  is  wrong  to  destroy  any  harmless  living  creature  not 
properly  classed  as  game,  except  it  be  to  preserve  it  in  a  museum ; 

3.  That  it  is  no  longer  right  for  civilized  man  to  look  upon  wild  game 
as  necessary  food;  because  there  is  plenty  of  other  food,  and  the  rem- 
nant of  game  can  not  withstand  slaughter  in  that  basis; 

4.  That  the  time  has  come  when  it  is  the  duty  of  every  good  citizen 
to  take  an  active,  aggressive  part  in  preventing  the  destruction  of  wild 
life,  and  in  promoting  its  preservation; 

5.  That  every  boy  and  girl  over  twelve  years  of  age  can  do  something 
in  this  cause,  and  finally, 

6.  That  protection  and  encouragement  will  bring  back  the  almost 
vanished  birds. 

We  call  upon  all  boards  of  education,  all  principals  of  schools  and  all 
teachers  to  educate  our  boys  and  girls,  constantly  and  imperatively, 
along  those  lines.  Teachers,  do  not  say  to  your  pupils, — "It  is  right  and 
nice  to  protect  birds,"  but  say: — "It  is  your  Duty  to  protect  all  harmless 
wild  things,  and  you  must  do  it!'' 

In  a  good  cause,  there  is  great  virtue  in  "  Must." 

Really,  we  are  losing  each  year  an  immense  amount  of  available  wild- 
life protection.  The  doctrine  of  imperative  individual  duty  never  yet 
has  been  taught  in  our  schools  as  it  should  be  taught.  A  few  teachers 
have,  indeed,  covered  this  ground;  but  I  am  convinced  that  their  pro- 
portion is  mighty  small. 

Text  Books. — The  writers  of  the  nature  study  text  books  are  very 
much  to  blame  because  nine-tenths  of  the  time  this  subject  has  been 
ignored.  The  situation  has  not  been  taken  seriously,  save  in  a  few  cases, 
by  a  very  few  authors.  I  am  glad  to  report  that  in  1912  there  was 
pubhshed  a  fine  text  book  by  Professor  James  W.  Peabody,  of  the  Morris 
High  School,  New  York,  and  Dr.  Arthur  E.  Hunt,  in  which  from  begin- 
ning to  end  the  duty  to  protect  wild  life  is  strongly  insisted  upon. 
It  is  entitled  "Elementary  Biology;    Plants,  Animals  and  Man." 

Hereafter,  no  zoological  or  nature  study  text  book  should  be  given  a 
place  in  any  school  in  America  unless  the  author  of  it  has  done  his  full 
share  in  setting  forth  the  duty  of  the  young  citizen  toward  wild  life.    Were 


378  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

I  a  member  of  a  board  of  education  I  wotild  seek  to  establish  and  enforce 
this  requirement.  To-day,  any  author  who  will  presume  to  write  a  text 
book  of  nature  study  or  zoology  without  knowing  and  doing  his  duty 
toward  our  vanishing  fauna,  is  too  ignorant  of  wild  life  and  too  careless 
of  his  duty  toward  it,  to  be  accepted  as  a  safe  guide  for  the  young.  The 
time  for  criminal  indifference  has  gone  by.  Hereafter,  every  one  who  is 
not  for  the  preservation  of  wild  life  is  against  it  •  and  it  is  time  to  separate 
the  sheep  from  the  goats. 

From  this  time  forth,  the  preservation  of  our  fauna  should  be  regarded 
as  a  subject  on  which  every  candidate  for  a  teacher's  certificate  should 
undergo  an  examination  before  receiving  authority  to  teach  in  a  public 
school.  The  candidate  should  be  required  to  know  why  the  preservation 
of  birds  is  necessary ;  why  the  slaughter  of  wild  life  is  wrong  and  criminal ; 
the  extent  to  which  wild  birds  and  mammals  return  to  us  and  thrive 
under  protection;  why  wild  game  is  no  longer  a  legitimate  food  supply; 
why  wild  game  should  not  be  sold,  and  why  the  feathers  of  wild  birds 
(other  than  game  birds)  never  should  be  used  as  millinery  ornaments. 

As  sensible  Americans,  and  somewhat  boastful  of  our  intelligence,  we 
should  put  the  education  of  the  young  in  wild-life  protection  on  a  rational 
business  basis. 

StATE  Efforts. — In  several  of  our  states,  systematic  efforts  to  educate 
children  in  their  duty  toward  wild  life  are  already  being  made.  To  this 
end,  an  annual  "Bird  Day"  has  been  established  for  state-wide  observ- 
ance.   This  splendid  idea  is  now  legally  in  force  in  the  following  states: 

California,  Connecticut,  Delaware,  Illinois,  Louisiana,  Minnesota, 
Ohio  and  Wisconsin. 

Bird  Day  is  also  more  or  less  regularly  observed,  though  not  legally 
provided  for,  in  New  York,  Indiana,  Colorado  and  Alabama,  and  locally 
in  some  cities  of  Pennsylvania.  Usually  the  observance  of  the  day  is 
combined  with  that  of  Arbor  Day,  and  the  date  is  fixed  by  proclamation 
of  the  Governor. 

Alabama  and  Wisconsin  regularly  issue  elaborate  and  beautiful 
Arbor  and  Bird  Day  annuals;  and  Illinois,  and  possibly  other  states, 
have  issued  very  good  publications  of  this  character. 

The  Phillips  Educational  Campaign  for  the  Birds. — Quite  re- 
cently there  has  come  under  my  notice  an  episode  in  the  education  of 
school  children  that  has  given  the  public  profound  satisfaction.  I  cite  it 
here  as  an  object  lesson  for  pan- America. 

In  Carrick,  Pennsylvania,  just  across  the  Monongahela  River  from 
the  city  of  Pittsburgh,  lives  John  M.  Phillips,  State  Game  Commissioner, 
nature-lover,  sportsman  and  friend  of  man.  He  is  a  man  who  does  things, 
and  gets  results.  Goat  Mountain  Park  (450  square  miles),  in  British 
Columbia,  to-day  owes  its  existence  to  him,  for  without  his  initiative  and 
labor  it  would  not  have  been  established.  It  was  the  first  game  preserve 
of  British  Columbia. 

Three  years  ago,  Mr.  Phillips  became  deeply  impressed  by  the  idea 


TEACHING   WILD  LIFE  PRUTECTIOX  TO  THE   YOUNG  379 


BIRD    DAY  AT   CARRICK,    PA. 
Marching  Behind  the  Governor 


that  one  of  the  best  ways  in  the  world  to  protect  the  wild  life,  both  of 
to-day  and  the  future,  would  be  in  teachinj.^  school  children  to  love  it  and 
protect  it.  His  fertile  brain  and  open  check-book  soon  devised  a  method 
for  his  home  city.  His  theory  was  that  by  givin*.^  the  children  something 
to  do,  not  only  in  protecting  but  in  actually  bringing  back  the  birds,  much 
might  be  accomplished. 

In  studying  the  subject  of  bringing  back  the  birds,  he  found  that 
the  Russian  mulberry  is  one  of  the  finest  trees  in  the  world  as  a  purvej'or 
of  good  fruit  for  many  kinds  of  birds.  The  tree  does  not  much  resemble 
our  native  mill  berry,  but  is  equally  beautiful  and  interesting.  "The 
fruit  is  not  a  long  berry,  nor  is  it  of  a  purj^lc  color,  but  it  grows  from  buds 
on  the  limbs  and  twigs  something  after  the  manner  of  the  pussy-willow. 
It  is  smaller,  of  light  color  and  has  a  very  distinct  flavor.  The  most 
striking  peculiarity  about  the  fruit  is  that  it  keeps  on  ripening  during 
two  months  or  more,  new  berries  appearing  daily  while  others  are  rij^cn- 
ing.  This  is  why  it  is  such  good  bird  food.  Nor  is  it  half  bad  for  folks, 
for  the  berries  are  good  to  look  at  and  to  eat,  either  with  cream  or  without, 
and  to  make  pies  that  will  set  any  sane  boy's  mouth  a-watering  at  sight." 
— (Erasmus  Wilson). 


380  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

Everyone  knows  the  value  of  sweet  cherries,  both  to  birds  and  to 
children. 

Mr.  Phillips  decided  that  he  wotdd  give  away  several  hundred  bird 
boxes,  and  also  several  hundred  sweet  cherry  and  Russian  mulberry 
trees.  The  first  gift  distribution  was  made  in  the  early  spring  of  1909. 
Another  followed  in  1910,  but  the  last  one  was  the  most  notable. 

On  April  11,  1912,  Carrick  had  a  great  and  glorious  Bird  Day.  Mr. 
Phillips  was  the  author  of  it,  and  Governor  Tener  the  finisher.  On  that 
day  occurred  the  third  annual  gift  distribution  of  raw  materials  designed 
to  promote  in  the  breasts  of  2,000  children  a  love  for  birds  and  an  active 
desire  to  protect  and  increase  them.  Mr.  Phillips  gave  away  500  bird 
boxes,  500  sweet  cherry  trees  and  200  mulberry  trees.  The  sun  shone 
brightly,  500  flags  waved  in  Carrick,  the  Governor  made  one  of  the 
best  speeches  of  his  life,  and  Erasmus  Wilson,  faithful  friend  of  the  birds, 
wrote  this  good  story  of  the  occasion  for  the  Gazette-Times,  of  Pittsburgh: 

The  Governor  was  there,  and  the  children,  the  bird-boxes,  and  the  young  trees. 
And  was  there  ever  a  brighter  or  more  fitting  day  for  a  children  and  bird  jubilee!  The 
scene  was  so  inspiring  that  Gov.  Tener  made  one  of  the  best  speeches  of  his  life. 

The  distribution  of  several  hundred  cherry  and  mulberry  trees  was  the  occasion,  and 
the  beautiful  grounds  of  the  Roosevelt  school,  Carrick,  was  the  scene. 

Mr.  John  M.  Phillips,  sane  sportsman  and  enthusiastic  friend  of  the  birds,  has  been 
looking  forward  to  this  as  the  culmination  of  a  scheme  he  has  been  working  on  for  years, 
and  he  was  more  than  pleased  with  the  outcome.  The  intense  delight  it  afforded  him 
more  than  repaid  him  for  all  it  has  cost  in  all  the  years  past. 

But  it  was  impossible  to  tell  who  were  the  more  delighted, — he,  or  the  Governor,  or 
the  children,  or  the  visitors  who  were  so  fortunate  as  to  be  present.  County  Superin- 
tendent of  Schools  Samuel  Hamilton  was  simply  a  mass  of  delight.  And  how  could  he 
be  otherwise,  surrounded  as  he  was  by  2,000  and  more  children  fairly  quivering  with 
delight? 

Children  will  care  for  and  defend  things  that  are  their  very  own,  fight  for  them  and 
stand  guard  over  them.  Realizing  this  Mr.  Phillips  undertook  to  show  them  how  they 
could  have  birds  all  their  own.  Being  clever  in  devising  schemes  for  achieving  things 
most  to  be  desired,  he  began  giving  out  bird-boxes  to  those  who  would  agree  to  put  them 
up,  and  to  watch  and  defend  the  birds  when  they  came  to  make  their  homes  with  them. 
And  he  found  that  no  more  faithful  sentinel  ever  stood  on  guard  than  the  boy  who  had 
a  bird-house  all  his  own. 

Here  was  the  solution  to  the  vexed  problem.  Provide  boxes  for  those  who  would 
agree  to  put  them  up,  care  for  the  birds,  and  study  their  habits  and  needs.  The  children 
agreed  at  once,  and  the  birds  did  not  object,  so  Mr.  Phillips  had  some  hundreds,  four 
or  five,  blue-bird  and  wren  boxc-s  constructed  during  the  past  winter.  These  were  passed 
out  some  weeks  ago  to  any  boys  or  girls  who  would  present  an  order  signed  by  their 
parents,  and  countersigned  by  the  principal  of  the  school. 

He  knows  enough  about  a  boy  to  know  that  he  does  not  prize  the  things  that  come 
without  effort,  nor  will  he  become  deeply  interested  in  anything  for  which  he  is  not  held 
more  or  less  responsible.  Hence  the  advantage  in  having  him  write  an  order,  have  it 
indorsed  by  his  parents,  and  vouched  for  by  his  school  principal. 

That  he  had  struck  the  right  scheme  was  proven  by  the  avidity  with  which  the  girls 
and  boys  rushed  for  the  boxes.  The  fact  that  a  heavy  rain  was  falling  did  not  dampen 
their  ardor  for  a  moment,  nor  did  the  fact  that  they  were  tramping  Mr.  Phillips'  beauti- 
ful lawn  into  a  field  of  mud. 

Mr.  Phillips,  seeing  the  necessity  of  providing  food  for  the  prospective  hosts  of  birds, 
and  wishing  to  place  the  responsibility  on  the  boys  and  girls,  offered  to  provide  a  cherry 
tree  or  mulberry  tree  for  every  box  erected,  provided  they  should  be  properly  planted 
and  diligently  cared  for. 


TEACHING  WILD   LIFE  PROTECTION  TO  THE   YOUNG  381 


DISTRIBUTING   BIRD  BOXES  AND  FRUIT  TREES 

This  was  practically  the  culmination  of  the  most  unique  bird  scheme  ever  attempted, 
and  yesterday  was  the  day  set  apart  for  the  distribution  of  these  hundreds  of  fruit  trees, 
the  products  of  which  are  to  be  divided  share  and  share  alike  with  the  birds. 

Nowhere  else  has  such  a  scheme  been  attempted,  and  never  before  has  there  been 
just  such  a  day  of  jubilee.  The  intense  interest  manifested  by  the  children,  and  the 
earnest  enthusiasm  manifested,  leaves  no  doubt  about  their  carrying  out  their  part  of 
the  contract. 

Up  to  date  (1912)  Mr.  Phillips  has  given  away  about  1,000  bird 
boxes,  1,500  cherry  and  Russian  mulberry  trees,  and  transformed  the 
schools  of  Carrick  into  seething  masses  of  children  militantly  enthusias- 
tic in  the  protection  of  birds,  and  in  providing  them  with  homes  and 
food.  As  a  final  coup,  Mr.  Phillips  has  induced  the  city  of  Pittsburgh 
to  create  the  office  of  City  Ornithologist,  at  a  salary  of  $1200  per  year. 
The  duty  of  the  new  officer  is  to  protect  all  birds  in  the  city  from  all 
kinds  of  molestation,  especially  when  nesting;  to  erect  bird-houses,  pro- 
vide food  for  wild  birds,  on  a  large  scale,  and  report  annually  upon  the 
increase  or  decrease  of  feathered  residents  and  visitors.  Mr.  Frederic 
S.  Webster,  long  known  as  a  naturalist  and  practical  ornithologist,  has 
been  appointed  to  the  position,  and  is  now  on  active  duty. 

So  far  as  we  are  aware,  Pittsburgh  is  the  first  city  to  create  the  office 
of  City  Ornithologist.  It  is  a  happy  thought;  it  will  yield  good  results, 
and  other  cities  will  follow  Pittsburgh's  good  example. 


CHAPTER  XLII 
THE    ETHICS    OF    SPORTSMANSHIP 

I  count  it  as  rather  strange  that  American  and  EngHsh  sportsmen 
have  hunted  and  shot  for  a  century,  and  until  1908  formulated  practically 
nothing  to  establish  and  define  the  ethics  of  shooting  game.  Here  and 
there,  a  few  unwritten  principles  have  been  evolved,  and  have  become 
fixed  by  common  consent;  but  the  total  number  of  these  is  very  few. 
Perhaps  this  has  been  for  the  reason  that  every  free  and  independent 
sportsman  prefers  to  be  a  law  unto  himself.  Is  it  not  doubly  strange, 
however,  that  even  down  to  the  present  year  the  term  "  sportsmen  " 
never  has  been  defined  by  a  sportsman ! 

Forty  years  ago,  a  sportsman  might  have  been  defined,  according 
to  the  standards  of  that  period,  as  a  man  who  hunts  wild  game  for  pleas- 
ure. Those  were  the  days  wherein  no  one  foresaw  the  wholesale  an- 
nihilation of  species,  and  there  were  no  wilderness  game  preserves.  In 
those  days,  gentlemen  shot  female  hoofed  game,  trapped  bears  if  they 
felt  like  it,  killed  ten  times  as  much  big  game  as  they  could  use,  and  no 
one  made  any  fuss  whatever  about  the  waste  or  extermination  of  wild  life. 

Those  were  the  days  of  ox-teams  and  broad-axes.  To-day,  we  are 
living  in  a  totally  different  world, — a  world  of  grinding,  crunching, 
pulverizing  progress,  a  world  of  annihilation  of  the  works  of  Nature. 
And  what  is  a  sportsman  to-day? 

A  Sportsman  is  a  man  who  loves  Nature,  and  who  in  the  enjoyment 
of  the  outdoor  life  and  exploration  takes  a  reasonable  toll  of  Nature's 
wild  animals,  but  not  for  commercial  profit,  and  only  so  long  as  his 
hunting  does  not  promote  the  extermination  of  species. 

In  view  of  the  disappearance  of  wild  life  all  over  the  habitable  globe, 
and  the  steady  extermination  of  species,  the  ethics  of  sportsmanship  has 
become  a  matter  of  tremendous  importance.  If  a  man  can  shoot  the  last 
living  Burchell  zebra,  or  prong-horned  antelope,  and  be  a  sportsman  and 
a  gentleman,  then  we  may  just  as  well  drop  down  all  bars,  and  say  no 
more  about  the  ethics  of  shooting  game. 

But  the  real  gentlemen-sportsmen  of  the  world  are  not  insensible  to 
the  duties  of  the  hour  in  regard  to  the  taking  or  not  taking  of  game. 
The  time  has  come  when  canon  laws  should  be  laid  down,  of  world-wide 
application,  and  so  thoroughly  accepted  and  promulgated  that  their 
binding  force  can  not  be  ignored.  Among  other  things,  it  is  time  for  a 
list  of  species  to  be  published  which  no  man  claiming  to  be  either  a  gentle- 
man or  a  sportsman  can  shoot  for  aught  else  than  preservation  in  a 
public  mu-seum.     Of  coiirse,  this  list  would  be  composed  of  the  species 


THE  ETHICS   OF  SPORTSMANSHIP  383 

that  are  threatened  with  extermination.  Of  American  animals  it  should 
include  the  prong-horned  antelope,  Mexican  mountain  sheep,  all  the 
mountain  sheep  and  goats  in  the  United  vStates,  the  California  grizzly 
bear,  mule  deer,  West  Indian  seal  and  California  eleohant  seal  and 
walrus. 

In  Africa  that  list  should  include  the  eland,  white  rhinoceros, 
blessbok,  bontebok,  kudu,  giraffes  and  southern  elephants,  sable  antelope, 
rhinoceros  south  of  the  Zambesi,  leucoryx  antelope  and  whale-headed 
stork.  In  Asia  it  should  include  the  great  Indian  rhinoceros  and  its 
allied  species,  the  burrhel,  the  Nilgiri  tahr  and  the  gayal.  The  David 
deer  of  Manchuria  already  is  extinct  in  a  wild  state. 

In  Australia  the  interdiction  should  include  the  thylacine  or  Tas- 
manian  wolf,  all  the  large  kangaroos ,  the  emu ,  1  yre  bird  and  the  mallee-bird . 

Think  what  it  would  mean  to  the  species  named  above  "if  all  the 
sportsmen  of  the  world  would  unite  in  their  defense,  both  actively  and 
passively!    It  would  be  to  those  species  a  modus  vivendi  worth  while. 

Prior  to  1908,  no  effort  (so  far  as  we  are  aware)  ever  had  been  made  to 
promote  the  establishment  of  a  comprehensive  and  up-to-date  code  of 
ethics  for  sportsmen  who  shoot.  A  few  clubs  of  men  who  are  hunters  of 
big  game  had  expressed  in  their  constitutions  a  few  brief  principles  for 
the  purpose  of  standardizing  their  own  respective  memberships,  but 
that  was  all.  I  have  not  taken  pains  to  make  a  general  canvass  of  sports- 
men's clubs  to  ascertain  what  rules  have  been  laid  down  by  any  large 
number  of  organizations. 

The  Boone  and  Crockett  Club,  of  New  York  and  Washington,  had 
in  its  constitution  the  following  excellent  article : 

"Article  X.  The  use  of  steel  traps,  the  making  of  large  bags,  the 
killing  of  game  while  swimming  in  water,  or  helpless  in  deep  snow,  and 
the  unnecessary  killing  of  females  or  young  of  any  species  of  ruminant, 
shall  be  deemed  offenses.  Any  member  who  shall  commit  such  offenses 
may  be  suspended,  or  expelled  from  the  Club  by  unanimous  vote  of  the 
Executive  Committee." 

In  1906,  this  Club  condemned  the  use  of  automatic  shotguns  in 
hunting  as  unsportsmanlike. 

The  Lewis  and  Clark  Club,  of  Pittsburgh,  has  in  its  constitution,  as 
Section  3  of  Article  3,  the  following  comprehensive  principle: 

' '  The  term  '  legitimate  sport '  means  not  only  the  observance  of  local 
laws,  but  excludes  all  methods  of  taking  game  other  than  by  fair  stalking 
or  still  hunting." 

At  the  end  of  the  constitution  of  this  clul)  is  this  declaration,  and 
admonition : 

''Purchase  and  sale  of  Trophies.- — As  the  purchase  of  heads  and  horns 
establishes  a  market  value,  and  encourages  Indians  and  others  to  "shoot 
for  sale,"  often  in  violation  of  local  laws  and  always  to  the  detriment  of 
the  protection  of  game  for  legitimate  sport,  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Club 
condemns  the  purchase  or  the  sale  of  the  heads  or  horns  of  any  game." 


384  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

In  1906  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Club  condemned  the  use  of  automatic 
shotguns  as  unsportsmanHke. 

The  Shikar  Club,  of  London,  a  club  which  contains  all  the  big-game 
hunters  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  England,*  and  of  which  His  Majesty 
King  George  is  Honorary  President,  has  declared  the  leading  feature  of 
its  "Objects"  in  the  following  terms: 

"To  maintain  the  standard  of  sportsmanship.  It  is  not  squandered 
bullets  and  swollen  bags  which  appeal  to  us.  The  test  is  rather  in  a  love  of 
forest,  mountains  and  desert;  in  acquired  knowledge  of  the  habits  of 
animals;  in  the  strenuous  pursuit  of  a  wary  and  dangerous  quarry;  in 
the  instinct  for  a  well-devised  approach  to  a  fair  shooting  distance;  and 
in  the  patient  retrieve  of  a  wounded  animal." 

In  1908  the  Camp-Fire  Club  of  America  formally  adopted,  as  its 
code  of  ethics,  the  "Sportsman's  Platform"  of  fifteen  articles  that  was 
prepared  by  the  writer  and  placed  before  the  sportsmen  of  America, 
Great  Britain  and  her  colonial  dependencies  in  that  year.  In  the  book 
of  the  Club  it  regularly  appears  as  follows : 

CODE  OF  L^.Z-'S 

OF   THE 

CAMP-FIRE  CLUB  OF  AMERICA 
Proposed  by  Wm.  T.  Hornaday  and  adopted  December  lo,  iqo8 


1.  The  wild  animal  life  of  to-day  is  not  ours,  to  do  with  as  we  please.  The 
original  stock  is  given  to  us  in  trust,  for  the  benefit  both  of  the  present  and  the 
future.    We  must  render  an  accounting  of  this  trust  to  those  who  come  after  us. 

2.  Judging  from  the  rate  at  which  the  wild  creatures  of  North  America  are  now 
being  destroyed,  fifty  years  hence  there  will  be  no  large  game  left  in  the  United 
States  nor  in  Canada,  outside  of  rigidly  protected  game  preserves.  It  is  therefore 
the  duty  of  every  good  citizen  to  promote  the  protection  of  forests  and  wild  life 
and  the  creation  of  game  preserves,  while  a  supply  of  game  remains.  Every  man 
who  finds  pleasure  in  hunting  or  fishing  should  be  willing  to  spend  both  time  and 
money  in  active  work  for  the  protection  of  forests,  fish  and  game. 

3.  The  sale  of  game  is  incompatible  with  the  perpetual  preservation  of  a  proper 
stock  of  game ;  therefore  it  should  be  prohibited  by  laws  and  by  public  sentiment. 

4.  In  the  settled  and  civilized  regions  of  North  America  there  is  no  real  neces- 
sity for  the  consumption  of  wild  game  as  human  food ;  nor  is  there  any  good  excuse 
for  the  sale  of  game  for  food  purposes.  The  maintenance  of  hired  laborers  on  wild 
game  should  be  prohibited  everywhere,  under  severe  penalties. 

5.  An  Indian  has  no  more  right  to  kill  wild  game,  or  to  subsist  upon  it  all  the 
year  round,  than  any  white  man  in  the  same  locality.  The  Indian  has  no  inherent 
or  God-given  ownership  of  the  game  of  North  America,  any  more  than  of  its  mineral 
resources;  and  he  should  be  governed  by  the  same  game  laws  as  white  men. 

6.  No  man  can  be  a  good  citizen  and  also  be  a  slaughterer  of  game  or  fishes 
beyond  the  narrow  limits  compatible  with  high-class  sportsmanship. 

*This  organization  contains  in  its  list  of  members  the  most  distinguished  names 
in  the  modern  annals  of  British  sport  and  exploration.  Its  honorary  membership,  of 
eight  persons,  contains  the  names  of  three  Americans:  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Madison 
Grant  and  W.  T.  Hornaday;  and  of  this  fact  at  least  one  person  is  extremely  proud! 


THE  ETHICS   OF  SPORTSMANSHIP  385 

7.  A  game-butcher  (jr  a  market-hunter  is  an  undesiral^ile  citizen,  and  should 
be  treated  as  such. 

8.  The  highest  purpose  which  the  killing  of  wild  game  and  game  fishes  can 
hereafter  be  made  to  serve  is  in  furnishing  objects  to  overworked  men  for  tramping 
and  camping  trii:)S  in  the  wilds;  and  the  value  of  wild  game  as  human  food  should 
no  longer  be  regardeil  as  an  important  factor  in  its  pursuit. 

9.  If  rightly  conserved,  wild  game  constitutes  a  valualile  asset  to  any  country 
which  possesses  it;  and  it  is  good  statesmanship  to  protect  it. 

10.  An  ideal  hunting  trip  consists  of  a  good  ctjmrade,  fine  country,  and  a  very 
few  trophies  per  hunter. 

11.  In  an  ideal  hunting  trip,  the  death  of  the  game  is  only  an  incident;  and  by 
no  means  is  it  really  necessary  to  a  successful  outing. 

12.  The  best  hunter  is  the  man  who  finds  the  mf)st  game,  kills  tlie  least,  and 
leaves  behind  him  no  wotmded  animals. 

13.  The  killing  of  an  animal  means  the  end  of  its  most  interesting  period. 
When  the  country  is  fine,  pursuit  is  more  interesting  than  possession. 

14.  The  killing  of  a  female  hoofed  animal,  save  for  special  preservation,  is  to 
be  regarded  as  incompatible  with  the  highest  sportsmanship;  and  it  should  every- 
where be  prohibited  by  stringent  laws. 

15.  A  particularly  fine  photograph  of  a  large  wild  animal  in  its  haunts  is 
entitled  to  more  credit  than  the  dead  trophy  of  a  similar  animal.  An  animal  that 
has  been  photographed  never  should  be  killed,  unless  j^rcviously  wounded  in  the 
chase. 

This  platform  has  been  adopted  as  a  code  of  ethics  by  the  follow^ing 
organizations,  besides  the  Camp-Fire  Club  of  America: 

The  Lewis  and  Clark  Club,  of  Pittsburgh,  John  M.  Phillips,  President. 

The  North  American  Fish  and  Game  Protective  Association  (Inter- 
national). 

Massachusetts  Fish  and  Game  Protective  Association,  Boston. 

Camp-Fire  Club  of  Michigan,  Detroit. 

Rod  and  Gun  Club,  Sheridan  County,  Wyoming. 

The  platform  has  been  endorsed  and  published  by  The  Society  for 
the  Preservation  of  the  Wild  Fauna  of  the  British  Empire  (London), 
which  is  an  endorsement  of  far-reaching  importance. 

Major  J.  Stevenson-Hamilton,  C.ALZ.S.,  Warden  of  the  Government 
Game  Reserves  of  the  Transvaal,  South  Africa,  has  adopted  the  platform 
and  given  it  the  most  effective  endorsement  that  it  has  received  from  any 
single  individual.  In  his  great  work  on  game  protection  in  Africa  and 
wild-animal  lore,  entitled  "Animal  Life  in  Africa"  (and  "very  highly 
commended"  by  the  Committee  on  Literary  Honors  of  the  Camp-Fire 
Club),  he  publishes  the  entire  platform,  with  a  depth  and  cordiality  of 
endorsement  that  is  bound  to  warm  the  heart  of  every  man  who  believes 
in  the  principles  laid  down  in  that  document.  He  says,  "It  should  be 
printed  on  the  back  of  every  license  that  is  issued  for  hunting  in  Africa." 

I  am  profoundly  impressed  by  the  fact  that  it  is  high  time  for  sports- 
men all  over  the  world  to  take  to  heart  the  vital  necessity  of  adopting 
high  and  clearly  defined  codes  of  ethics,  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  present 
hour.  The  days  of  game  abundance,  and  the  careless  treatment  of  wild 
life  have  gone  by,  never  to  return. 


CHAPTER  XLIir 

THE  DUTY  OF  AMERICAN   ZOOLOGISTS  AND   EDUCATORS 
TO    AMERICAN   WILD    LIFE 

The  publication  of  this  chapter  will  hardly  be  regarded  as  a  bid  for 
fame,  or  even  popularity,  on  the  part  of  the  author.  However,  the 
subject  can  not  be  ignored  simply  because  it  is  disagreeable. 

Throughout  sixty  years,  to  go  no  further  back,  the  people  of  America 
have  been  witnessing  the  strange  spectacle  of  American  zoologists,  as  a 
mass,  so  intent  upon  the  academic  study  of  our  continental  fauna  that 
they  seem  not  to  have  cared  a  continental  about  the  destruction  of  that 
fauna. 

During  that  tragic  period  twelve  species  of  North  American  birds 
have  been  totally  exterminated,  twenty-three  are  almost  exterminated, 
and  the  mammals  have  fared  very  badly. 

If  "by  their  works  ye  shall  know  them,"  then  no  man  can  say  that 
the  men  referred  to  have  been  conspicuous  on  the  firing  line  in  defense 
of  assaulted  wild  life.  In  their  hearts,  we  know  that  in  an  academic  way 
the  naturalists  of  America  do  care  about  wild-life  slaughter,  and  the 
extermination  of  species ;  and  we  also  know  that  perhaps  fifty  American 
zoologists  have  at  times  taken  an  active  and  serious  interest  in  protection 
work. 

I  am  speaking  now  of  the  general  body  of  museum  directors  and 
curators ;  professors  and  teachers  of  zoology  in  our  institutions  of  learning 
— a  legion  in  themselves;  teachers  of  nature  study  in  our  secondary 
schools;  investigators  and  specialists  in  state  and  government  service; 
the  taxidermists  and  osteologists;  and  the  array  of  literary  people  who, 
like  all  the  foregoing,  make  their  bread  and  butter  out  of  the  exploitation 
of  wild  life. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  the  people  named  above  constitute  a  grand  army 
of  at  least  five  thousand  trained,  educated,  resourceful  and  influential 
persons.  They  all  depend  upon  wild  life  for  their  livelihood.  When  they 
talk  about  living  things,  the  public  listens  with  respectful  attention. 
Their  knowledge  of  the  value  of  wild  life  would  be  worth  something  to 
our  cause;  but  thus  far  it  never  has  been  capitalized! 

These  people  are  hard  workers;  and  when  they  mark  out  definite 
courses  and  attainable  goals,  they  know  how  to  get  results.  Yet  what 
do  we  see? 

For  sixty  long  years,  with  the  exception  of  the  work  of  a  corporal's 
guard  of  their  number,  this  grand  army  has  remained  in  camp,  partly 


DUTY  OF  ZOOLOGISTS  AND    EDUCATORS  387 

neglecting  and  partly  refusing  to  move  upon  the  works  of  the  enemy. 
For  sixty  years,  with  the  exception  of  the  non-game-bird  law,  as  a  class 
and  a  mass  they  have  left  to  the  sportsmen  of  the  country  the  dictating 
of  laws  for  the  protection  of  all  the  game  birds,  the  mammals  and  the 
game  fishes.  When  we  stop  to  consider  that  the  game  birds  alone  em- 
brace 154  very  important  species,  the  appalling  extent  to  which  the  zool- 
ogist has  abdicated  in  favor  of  the  sportsman  becomes  apparent. 

It  is  a  very  great  mistake,  and  a  wrong  besides,  for  the  zoologists  of 
the  country  to  abandon  the  game  birds,  mammals  and  fishes  of  North 
America  to  the  sportsmen,  to  do  with  as  they  please !  Yet  that  is  practic- 
ally what  has  been  done. 

The  time  was,  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  when  wild  life  was  so  abun- 
dant that  we  did  not  need  to  worry  about  its  preservation.  That  was  the 
golden  era  of  study  and  investigation.  That  era  ended  definitely  in  1884, 
with  the  practical  extermination  of  the  wild  American  bison,  partly 
through  the  shameful  greed  and  partly  through  the  neglect  of  the  American 
people.  We  are  now  living  in  the  viiddle  of  the  period  of  Extermination! 
The  questions  for  every  American  zoologist  and  every  sportsman  to  an- 
swer now  are :  Shall  the  slaughter  of  species  go  on  to  a  quick  end  of  the 
period?  Shall  we  give  posterity  a  birdless,  gameless,  fishless  continent, 
or  not?  Shall  we  have  close  seasons,  all  over  the  country,  for  five  or  ten 
years,  or  for  five  hundred  years? 

If  we  are  courageous,  we  will  brace  up  and  answer  these  questions 
now,  like  men.  If  we  are  faint-hearted,  and  eager  for  peace  at  any  price, 
then  we  will  sidestep  the  ugly  situation  until  the  destroyers  have  settled 
it  for  us  by  the  wholesale  extermination  of  species. 

If  the  zoologist  cares  to  know,  then  I  will  tell  him  that  to-day  the 
wild  life  of  the  world  can  be  saved  by  law,  but  not  by  sentiment  alone! 
You  cannot  "educate"  a  poacher,  a  game-hog,  a  market-gunner,  a  mil- 
liner or  a  vain  and  foolish  woman  of  fashion.  All  these  must  be  curbed 
and  controlled  by  law.  Game  refuges  alone  will  not  save  the  wild  life! 
All  species  of  birds,  mammals  and  game  fishes  of  North  America  must  have 
more  thorough  and  far-reaching  protection  than  they  now  have. 

Do  not  always  take  your  cue  froni  the  sportsmen,  especially  regarding 
the  enactment  of  long  close  sca.sons!  If  you  need  good  advice,  or  help 
about  drafting  a  bill,  write  to  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer,  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture, Washington,  and  you  will  receive  prompt  and  valuable  assistance. 
The  Doctor  is  a  wise  man,  and  there  is  nothing  about  protective  laws 
that  is  unknown  to  him.  Go  to  yoiir  state  senator  and  your  assemblyman 
with  the  bills  that  you  know  should  be  enacted  into  law,  and  assure  them 
that  those  measures  are  necessary  for  the  wild  life,  and  beneficial  to  98 
per  cent  of  the  people  who  own  the  wild  life.  You  will  be  heard  with 
respectful  attention,  in  any  law-making  body  that  you  choose  to 
enter. 

People  who  cannot  give  time  and  labor  must  supply  you  with  money 
for  your  campaigns.  Ask,  and  you  will  receive!  I  have  proven  this 
manv  times.     With  care  and  exactness  account  to  vour  subscribers  for 


388  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

the  expenditure  of  all  money  placed  in  your  hands,  and  you  will  receive 
continuous  support. 

In  times  of  great  stress,  print  circulars  and  leaflets  by  the  ten-thou- 
sand, and  get  them  into  the  hands  of  the  People,  calling  for  their  help. 
Our  42,000  copies  of  the  "Wild  Life  Call"  (sixteen  pages)  were  dis- 
tributed by  organizations  all  over  the  state  of  New  York,  and  along 
with  Mr.  Andrew  D.  Meloy's  letters  to  the  members  of  the  New  York 
State  League,  aroused  such  a  tidal  wave  of  public  sentiment  against  the 
sale  of  game  that  the  Bayne  bill  was  finally  swept  through  the  Legislature 
with  only  one  dissenting  vote!  And  yet,  in  the  beginning  not  one  man 
dared  to  hope  that  that  very  revolutionary  measure  could  by  any  possibility 
be  passed  in  its  first  year  in  New  York  State,  even  if  it  ever  could  be ! 

It  was  the  aroused  Public  that  did  it ! 

This  volume  has  been  written  (under  great  pressure)  in  order  to  put 
the  whole  situation  before  the  people  of  America,  including  the  zool- 
ogists, and  to  give  them  some  definite  information,  state  by  state, 
regarding  the  needs  of  the  hour.  Look  at  the  needs  of  your  own  state,  in 
the  "Roll  Call  of  States,"  and  you  will  find  work  for  your  hand  to  do. 
Clear  your  conscience  by  taking  hold  now,  to  do  everything  that  you 
can  to  stop  the  carnage  and  preserve  the  remnant.  Twenty-five  or  fifty 
years  hence,  if  we  have  a  birdless  and  gameless  continent,  let  it  not  be 
said  that  the  zoologists  of  America  helped  to  bring  it  about  by  wicked 
apathy. 

At  this  juncture,  a  brief  survey  of  the  attitude  toward  wild  life  of 
certain  American  institutions  of  national  reputation  will  be  decidedly 
pertinent.  I  shall  mention  only  a  few  of  the  many  that  through  their 
character  and  position  owe  specific  duties  to  this  cause.     Noblesse  oblige! 

The  Biological  Survey  of  the  U.  S.  Deoartment  of  Agriculture  is  a 
splendid  center  of  activity  and  initiative  in  the  preservation  of  our  wild 
life.  The  work  of  Dr.  T.  S.  Palmer  has  already  been  spoken  of,  and 
thanks  to  his  efforts  and  direction,  the  Survey  has  become  the  recognized 
special  champion  of  preservation  in  America. 

The  U.  S.  Forestry  Bureau  is  developing  into  a  very  valuable  ally, 
and  we  confidently  look  forward  to  the  time  when  its  influence  in  pre- 
servation will  be  a  hundred  times  more  potent  than  it  is  to-day.  That 
will  be  when  every  national  forest  is  made  a  game  preserve,  and  every  forest 
ranger  is  made  a  game  warden.  Let  us  have  both  those  developments, 
and  quickly. 

In  1896  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History  became  a  cen- 
ter of  activity  in  bird  protection,  and  the  headquarters  of  the  New  York 
State  Audubon  Society.  The  president  of  the  Museum  (Professor 
Henry  Fairfield  Osborn)  is  also  the  president  of  that  organization. 

In  several  of  the  New  York  State  movements  for  bird  conservation, 
especially  those  bearing  on  the  plumage  law,  the  American  Museum  has 
been  active,  and  at  times  conspicuous.  No  one  (so  I  believe)  ever 
appealed  to  the  President  of  the  Museum  for  help  on  the  firing  line 
without  receiving  help  of  some  kind.     Unfortunately,  however,  the  pre- 


DUTY  OF  ZOOLOGISTS  AND   EDUCATORS  389 

servation  of  wild  life  is  not  one  of  the  declared  objects  of  the  American 
Museum  corporation,  or  one  on  which  its  officers  may  spend  money,  as 
is  so  freely  and  even  joyously  done  by  the  Zoological  Society.  The 
Museum's  influence  has  been  exerted  chiefly  through  the  active  workers 
of  the  State  Audubon  Society,  and  it  was  as  president  of  that  body  that 
Professor  Osborn  subscribed  to  the  fund  that  was  so  largely  instrumental 
in  creating  the  New  York  law  against  the  sale  of  game. 

There  is  room  for  an  important  improvement  in  the  declared  objects 
of  the  American  Museum.  To  the  cause  of  protection  it  is  a  distinct  loss 
that  that  great  and  powerful  institution  should  be  unable  to  spend 
any  money  in  promoting  the  preservation  of  our  fauna  from  annihi- 
lation.    An  amendment  to  its  constitution  is  earnestly  recommended. 

The  activities  of  the  New  York  Zoological  Society  began  in  1896> 
and  they  do  not  require  comment  here.  They  have  been  continuous, 
aggressive  and  far-reaching,  and  they  have  been  supported  by  thousands  of 
dollars  from  the  Society's  treasury.  It  is  true  that  the  funds  available 
for  protection  work  have  not  represented  a  great  annual  sum,  such  as 
the  work  demands,  but  the  amount  being  expended  from  year  to  year  is 
steadily  increasing.  In  serious  emergencies  there  is  always  something 
available!  During  the  past  two  years,  to  relieve  the  Society  of  a  portion 
of  this  particular  burden,  the  director  of  the  Park  secured  several  large 
subscriptions  from  persons  outside  the  Society,  who  previously  had 
never  entered  into  this  work. 

The  Milwaukee  Public  Museum  has  entered  activel^^  and  effectively 
into  the  fight  to  preserve  the  birds  of  Wisconsin  from  annihilation  by 
the  saloon-loafer  element  that  three  years  ago  determined  to  repeal  the 
best  bird  laws  on  the  books,  and  throw  the  shooting  privilege  wide  open. 
Mr.  Henry  L.  Ward,  Director  of  the  Museum,  went  to  the  firing  line, 
and  remained  there.  Last  year  the  saloon  element  thought  that  they 
had  a  large  majority  of  the  votes  in  the  legislature  pledged  to  vote  their 
way.  It  looked  like  it ;  but  when  the  decent  people  again  rose  and  de- 
manded justice  for  the  birds,  the  members  of  the  legislature  stood  by 
them  in  large  majorities.  The  spring-shooting,  bag-limit  and  hunting- 
license  laws  were  not  repealed. 

The  University  of  Kansas  (Lawrence)  scored  heavily  for  the  cause 
of  wild-life  protection  when  in  1908  it  gave  to  the  Governor  of  the  state 
the  services  of  a  member  of  its  faculty,  Professor  Lewis  Lindsay  Dyche, 
who  was  wanted  to  fill  the  position  of  State  Fish  and  Game  Commissioner. 
Professor  Dyche  proved  to  be  a  very  live  wire,  and  his  activities  have 
covered  the  State  of  Kansas  to  its  farthest  corners.  We  love  him  for  the 
host  of  enemies  he  has  made — among  the  poachers,  game-butchers, 
pseudo-"  sportsmen  "  and  lawbreakers  generally.  The  men  who  thought 
they  had  the  "pull"  of  friendship  for  lawbreaking  were  first  warned, 
and  then  as  second  offenders  hauled  up  to  the  bar,  one  and  all.  The 
more  the  destroyers  try  to  hound  the  Commissioner,  the  more  popular 
is  he  with  the  great,  solid  mass  of  good  citizens  who  bclic\'c  in  the  saving 
of  wild  life. 


390  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

The  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology  has  at  last  made  a  begin- 
ning in  the  field  of  protection.  Last  winter,  while  the  great  battle  raged 
over  the  Wharton  no-sale-of-game  bill,  several  members  of  the  Museum 
staff  appeared  at  the  hearings  and  otherwise  worked  for  the  success  of  the 
measure.  It  was  most  timely  aid, — and  very  much  needed.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  that  auspicious  beginning  will  be  continued  from  year  to  year. 
The  Museum  should  keep  at  least  one  good  fighter  constantly  in  the  field. 

The  Boston  Society  of  Natural  History  takes  a  very  active 
part  in  promoting  the  preservation  of  the  fauna  of  Massachusetts,  and 
in  resisting  the  attempts  of  the  destroyers  to  repeal  the  excellent  laws 
now  in  force.  Its  members  put  forth  vigorous  efforts  in  the  great  cam- 
paign of  1912. 

The  Brooklyn  Institute  of  Arts  and  Sciences  is  well  represented 
in  the  field  of  protection  by  Director  Franklin  W.  Hooper,  now  president 
of  the  American  Bison  Society,  and  an  earnest  promoter  of  the  per- 
petuation of  the  bison.  When  the  Wind  Cave  National  Bison  Herd  is 
fully  established,  in  South  Dakota,  as  it  practically  is  already,  the  chief 
credit  for  that  coup  will  be  due  to  the  unflagging  energy  and  persistence 
of  Professor  Hooper. 

The  Buffalo  Academy  of  Sciences  in  1911  entered  actively  and 
effectively,  under  the  leadership  of  Dr.  Lee  H.  Smith,  into  the  campaign 
for  the  Bayne  bill.  Besides  splendid  service  rendered  in  western  New 
York,  Dr.  Smith  appeared  in  Albany  with  a  strong  delegation  in  support 
of  the  bill. 

The  University  of  California  was  the  first  institution  of  learning 
to  enter  the  field  of  wild-life  protection  for  active,  aggressive  and  perma- 
nent work.  W.  L.  Taylor  and  Joseph  Grinnell,  of  the  University  Museum, 
have  taken  up  the  fight  to  save  the  fauna  of  California  from  the  dangers 
that  now  threaten  it. 

At  this  point  our  enumeration  of  the  activities  of  American  zoological 
institutions  comes  to  an  unfortunate  end.  There  are  many  individuals 
to  be  named  elsewhere,  in  the  roll  of  honor,  but  that  is  another  story.  I 
am  now  going  to  set  before  the  public  the  names  of  certain  institutions 
largely  devoted  to  zoology  and  permeated  by  zoologists,  which  thus  far 
seem  to  have  entirely  ignored  the  needs  of  our  fauna,  and  which  so  far  we 
know  have  contributed  neither  men,  money  nor  encouragement  to  the 
Army  of  the  Defense. 

Partial  List  of  Institutions  Owing  Service  to  Wild  Life. 

The  United  States  National  Museum  contains  a  large  and  expensive 
corps  of  zoological  curators  and  assistant  curators,  some  of  whom  long 
ago  should  have  taken  upon  themselves  the  task  of  reforming  the  laws 
of  the  District  of  Columbia,  Virginia  and  Maryland,  at  their  very  doors ! 
This  museum  should  maintain  at  least  one  man  in  the  field  of  protection, 
and  the  existence  of  the  Biological  Survey  is  no  excuse  for  the  Museum's 
inactivity. 


DUTY  OF  ZOOLOGISTS  AND  EDUCATORS  391 

The  Field  Museum  of  Chicago  is  a  great  institution,  but  it  appears 
to  be  inactive  in  wild-life  protection,  and  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  our 
wild  life.  Its  influence  is  greatly  needed  on  the  firing  line,  especially  in 
Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Iowa  and  northern  Minnesota.  First  of  all  the  odious 
sale-of-game  situation  in  Chicago  should  be  cleaned  up! 

The  Philadelphia  Academy  of  Sciences  has  been  represented  on  the 
A.  O.  U.  Committee  on  Bird  Protection  by  Mr.  Witmcr  Stone.  The  time 
has  come  when  this  Academy  should  be  represented  on  the  firing  line  as 
a  virile,  wide-awake,  self-sacrificing  and  aggressive  force.  It  is  perhaps 
the  oldest  zoological  body  in  the  United  States!  Its  scientific  standing 
is  unquestioned.  Its  members  must  know  of  the  carnage  that  is  going 
on  around  them,  for  they  are  not  ignorant  men.  The  Pennsylvania  vState 
Game  Commission  to-day  stands  in  urgent  need  of  active,  vigorous  and 
persistent  assistance  from  the  Philadelphia  Academy  in  the  fierce  cam- 
paign already  in  progress  for  additional  protective  laws.  Will  that  help 
be  given? 

The  Carnegie  Institute  of  Washington  (endowment  $22,000,000)  un- 
questionably owes  a  great  duty  toward  wild  life,  no  portion  of  which 
has  yet  been  discharged.  Academic  research  work  is  all  very  well,  but 
it  does  not  save  faunas  from  annihilation.  In  the  saving  of  the  birds 
and  mammals  of  North  America  a  hundred  million  people  are  directly 
interested,  and  the  cause  is  starving  for  money,  men  and  publicity. 
Education  is  not  the  ONLY  duty  of  educators! 

The  Carnegie  Museum  at  Pittsburgh  should  be  provided  by  Pitts- 
burgh with  sufficient  funds  that  its  Director  can  put  a  good  man  into 
the  field  of  protection,  and  maintain  his  activities.  The  State  of  Penn- 
sylvania, and  the  nation  at  large,  needs  such  a  worker  at  Pittsburgh; 
and  this  statement  is  not  open  to  argument! 


The  California  Academy  of  Sciences ; 
The  Chicago  Academy  of  Sciences; 
The  New  York  Academy  of  Sciences; 


Appear  to  have  done  nothing 
noteworthy     in    promoting 


The  National  Academy  of  Sciences ;     \      the    preservation     and    in 


The  Rochester  Academy  of  Sciences ; 
The  Philadelphia  Zoological  Society ; 
The  National  Zoologfical  Park; 


crease   of    the   wild   life   of 
Aincrica. 


A  Few  of  the  Instititions  of  Learning  Which  Shoild  Each  De- 
vote One  Man  to  this  Cause. 

Columbia  University,  of  New  York,  has  a  very  large  and  strong  corps 
of  zoological  professors  in  its  Department  of  Biology.  No  living  organism 
is  too  small  or  too  worthless  to  be  studied  by  high-grade  men ;  but  does 
any  man  of  Columbia  ever  raise  his  voice,  actively  and  determinedly,  for 
the  preservation  of  our  fauna,  or  any  other  fauna?  Columbia  should 
give  the  services  of  one  man  wholly  to  this  cause. 

There  are  men  whose  zoological  ideals  soar  so  high  that  they  can 
not  see  the  slaughter  of  wild  creatures  that  is  so  furiously  proceeding  on 


392  OUR   VANISHING  WILD  LIFE 

the  surface  of  this  blood-stained  earth.  We  don't  want  to  hear  about 
the  "behavior"  of  protozoans  while  our  best  song  birds  are  being  exter- 
minated by  negroes  and  poor  whites. 

Cornell  University  should  now  awaken  to  the  new  situation.  All  the 
zoological  Neros  should  not  fiddle  while  Rome  burns.  For  the  sake  of 
consistency,  Cornell  should  devote  the  services  of  at  least  one  member  of 
its  large  and  able  faculty  to  the  cause  of  wild-life  protection.  Cornell  was 
a  pioneer  in  forestry  teaching:  and  why  should  she  not  lead  off  now  in 
the  new  field  ? 

Yale  University,  in  Professor  James  W.  Toumey,  Director  of  the  School 
of  Forestry,  possesses  a  natural,  ready-made  protector  of  wild  life.  From 
forestry  to  wild  life  is  an  easy  step.  We  hopefully  look  forward  to  the 
development  of  Professor  Toumey  into  a  militant  protectionist,  fighting 
for  the  helpless  creatures  that  must  be  protected  by  man  or  perish!  If 
Yale  is  willing  to  set  a  new  pace  for  the  world's  great  universities,  she 
has  the  Man  ready  at  hand. 

The  University  of  Chicago  should  become  the  center  of  a  great  new 
protectionist  movement  which  should  cover  the  whole  Middle  West  area, 
from  the  plains  to  Pittsburgh.  This  is  the  inflexible,  logical  necessity 
of  the  hour.    Either  protect  zoology,  or  else  for  very  shame  give  up  teaching  it! 

Every  higher  institution  of  learning  in  America  novo  has  a  duty  in  this 
matter.  Times  have  changed.  Things  are  not  as  they  were  thirty  years 
ago.  To  allow  a  great  and  valuable  wild  fauna  to  be  destroyed  and 
wasted  is  a  crime,  against  both  the  present  and  the  future.  If  we  mean 
to  be  good  citizens  we  cannot  shirk  the  duty  to  conserve.  We  are  trus- 
tees of  the  inheritance  of  future  generations,  and  we  have  no  right  to 
squander  that  inheritance.  If  we  fail  of  our  plain  duty,  the  scorn  of 
future  generations  surely  will  be  our  portion. 


CHAPTER  XLIV 

THE  GREATEST   NEEDS    OF   THE   WILD-LIFE    CAUSE    AND 
THE   DUTY    OF   THE    HOUR 

The  fate  of  wild  life  in  North  America  hangs  to-day  by  three  very 
slender  threads,  the  names  of  which  you  will  hardly  guess  unaided.  They 
are  Labor,  Money  and  Publicity!  The  threads  are  vSlender  because 
there  is  so  little  raw  material  in  them. 

We  do  not  need  money  with  which  to  "buy  votes"  or  "influence," 
but  money  with  which  to  pay  workers;  to  publish  things  to  arouse  the 
American  people;  to  sting  sportsmen  into  action;  to  hire  wardens;  to 
prosecute  game-hogs  and  buy  refuges  for  wild  life.  If  a  sufficient  amount 
of  money  for  these  purposes  cannot  be  procured,  then  as  sure  as  the  earth 
continues  to  revolve,  our  wild  life  will  pass  away,  forever. 

This  is  no  cause  for  surprise,  or  wonder.  In  this  twentieth  century 
money  is  essential  to  every  great  enterprise,  whether  it  be  for  virtue  or 
mischief.  The  enemies  of  wild  life,  and  the  people  who  support  them, 
are  very  powerful.  The  man  whose  pocket  or  whose  personal  privilege 
is  threatened  by  new  legislation  is  prompted  by  business  reasons  to  work 
against  you,  and  spend  money  in  protecting  his  interests. 

Now,  it  happens  that  the  men  of  ordinary  means  who  have  nothing 
personal  at  stake  in  the  preservation  of  wild  life  save  sentimental  con- 
siderations, cannot  afford  to  leave  their  business  more  than  three  or  four 
days  each  year  on  protection  affairs.  Yet  many  times  services  are 
demanded  for  many  days,  or  even  weeks  together,  in  order  to  accomplish 
results.  Bad  repeal  bills  must  be  fought  until  they  are  dead;  and  good 
protective  bills  must  be  supported  until  the  breath  of  life  is  breathed  into 
them  by  the  executive  signature. 

With  money  in  hand,  good  men  aways  can  be  found  who  will  work  in 
game  protection  for  about  one-half  what  they  would  demand  in  other 
pursuits.  With  the  men  whom  you  really  desire,  sentiment  is  always  a 
controlling  factor.  It  is  my  inflexible  rule,  however,  in  asking  for  services, 
that  men  who  give  valuable  time  and  strength  to  the  cause  shall  not  be 
allowed  to  take  their  expense  money  from  their  own  pockets.  Soldiers 
on  the  firing  line  cannot  provide  the  sinews  of  war  that  come  from  the 
paymaster's  chest! 

Campaigns  of  publicity  are  matters  of  tremendous  necessity  and  im- 
portance; but  their  successful  promotion  requires  hundreds,  or  possibly 
thousands  of  dollars,  for  each  state  that  is  covered. 

I  believe  that  the  wealthy  men  and  women  of  America  arc  the  most 
liberal  givers  for  the  benefit  of  humanity  that  can  be  found  in  all  the 


394  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE       ' 

world.  New  York  especially  contains  a  great  number  of  men  who  year  in 
and  year  out  work  hard  for  money — in  order  to  give  it  away !  The  depth 
and  breadth  of  the  philanthropic  spirit  in  New  York  City  is  to  me  the 
most  surprising  of  all  the  strange  impulses  that  sway  the  inhabitants  of 
that  seething  mass  of  mixed  humanity.  Every  imaginable  cause  for  the 
benefit  of  mankind, — save  one, — has  received,  and  still  is  receiving, 
millions  of  gift  dollars. 

Some  enterprises  for  the  transcendant  education  of  the  people  are  at 
this  moment  hopelessly  wallowing  in  the  excess  of  wealth  that  has  been 
thrust  upon  them.  Men  are  being  hired  at  high  salaries  to  help  spend 
wealth  in  high,  higher,  highest  education  and  research.  It  is  now  fashion- 
able to  bequeath  millions  to  certain  causes  that  do  not  need  them  in  the 
least!  In  education  there  is  a  mad  scramble  to  educate  every  young 
man  to  the  topmost  notch,  often  far  above  his  probable  station  in  life, 
and  into  tastes  and  wants  far  beyond  his  powers  to  maintain. 

In  all  this,  however,  there  would  be  no  cause  for  regret  if  the  wild  life 
of  our  continent  were  not  in  such  a  grievous  state.  If  we  felt  no  con- 
science burden  for  those  who  come  after  us,  we  would  not  care  where  the 
millions  go;  but  since  things  are  as  they  are,  it  is  heartbreaking  to  see 
the  cause  of  wild-life  protection  actually  starving,  or  at  the  best  sub- 
sisting only  on  financial  husks  and  crumbs,  while  less  important  causes 
literally  flounder  in  surplus  wealth. 

This  regret  is  intensified  by  the  knowledge  that  in  no  other  cause 
for  the  conservation  of  the  resources  most  valuable  to  mankind  will  a  dollar 
go  so  Jar,  or  bring  back  such  good  results,  as  in  the  preservation  of  wild  life! 
The  promotion  of  "the  Bayne  bill"  and  the  enactment  of  the  Bayne  law 
is  a  fair  example.  That  law  is  to-day  on  the  statute  books  of  the  State 
of  New  York  because  fifty  men  and  women  promptly  subscribed  $5,000 
to  a  fund  formed  with  special  reference  to  the  expenses  of  the  campaign 
for  that  measure;  and  the  uplift  of  that  victory  will  be  felt  for  years  to 
come,  just  as  it  already  has  been  in  Massachusetts. 

At  one  time  I  was  tempted  to  show  the  financial  skeleton  in  the  closet 
of  wild-life  protection,  by  inserting  here  a  statement  of  the  funds  available 
to  be  expended  by  all  the  New  York  organizations  during  the  campaign 
year  of  1911-1912.  But  I  cannot  do  it.  The  showing  is  too  painful,  too 
humiliating.     From  it  our  enemies  would  derive  too  much  comfort. 

Even  in  New  York  State,  in  view  of  the  great  interests  at  stake,  the 
showing  is  pitiful.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania, 
Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  and  a  dozen  other  states  where  the  situation  is 
much  worse  ?  In  the  winter  of  1912  a  cry  for  help  came  to  us  from  a  neigh- 
boring state,  where  a  terrific  fight  was  being  made  by  the  forces  of  de- 
struction against  all  reform  measures,  and  in  behalf  of  retrogression  on 
spring  shooting.  The  appeal  said :  ' '  The  situation  in  our  legislature  is 
the  worst  that  it  has  been  in  years.  Our  enemies  are  very  strong,  well 
organized,  and  they  fight  us  at  every  step.  We  have  no  funds,  and  we 
are  expected  to  make  bricks  without  straw !  Is  there  not  something  that 
you  can  do  to  help  us""" 


GREA  TEST  NEEDS  OF    WILD-LIFE  CA  USE  395 

There  was! 

Only  one  week  previously,  a  good  friend  (who  deelines  to  be  named) 
gave  us  two  thousand  dollars,  of  real  money,  for  just  such  emergencies. 

Within  thirty-six  hours  an  entirely  new  fighting  force  had  been  or- 
ganized and  equipped  for  service.  Within  one  week,  those  reinforcements 
had  made  a  profound  impression  on  the  defenses  of  the  enemy,  and  in  the 
end  the  great  fight  was  won.  Of  our  small  campaign  fund  it  took  away 
over  one  thousand  dollars;  but  the  victory  was  worth  it. 

With  money  enough, — a  reasonable  sum, — the  birds  of  North  America, 
and  some  of  the  small-mammal  species  also,  can  be  saved.  The  big  game 
that  is  hunted  and  killed  outside  the  game  preserves,  and  outside  of  such 
places  as  New  Brunswick  and  the  Adirondacks,  can  not  be  saved — until 
each  species  is  given  perpetual  protection.  Colorado  is  saving  a  small 
remnant  of  her  mountain  sheep,  but  Montana  and  Wyoming  are  wasting 
theirs,  because  they  allow  killing,  and  the  killers  are  ten  times  too  nu- 
merous for  the  sheep.  They  imagine  that  by  permitting  only  the  killing 
of  rams  they  are  saving  the  species;  but  that  is  an  absolute  fallacy,  and 
soon  it  will  have  a  fatal  ending. 

AVith  an  endowment  fund  of  $2,000,000  (only  double  the  price  of  the 
two  old  Velasquez  paintings  purchased  recently  by  a  gentleman  of  New 
York !)  a  very  good  remnant  of  the  wild  life  of  North  America  could  be  sa^'ed. 

But  who  will  give  the  fund,  or  even  a  quarter  of  it  ? 
Thus  far,  the  largest  sums  ever  given  in  America  for  the  cause  of  wild- 
life protection,  so  far  as  I  know    personalh%  have  been  the  following: 

Albert  Wilcox,  to  the  National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies,  $322,000 
Mary  Dutcher  Fund,  to  the  National  Association  of  Audubon 

Societies 12,000 

Mrs.  Russell  Sage,  for  the  purchase  of  Marsh  Island 150,000 

American  Game  Protective  and  Propagation  Association,  from 

the  manufacturers  of  firearms  and  ammunition,  annually .  .  25,000 
Charles  Willis  Ward  and  E.  A.  Mclllhenny,  purchase  of  game 

preserve  presented  to  Louisiana 39,000 

Mrs.  Russell  Sage,  miscellaneous  gifts  to  the  National  Audubon 

Society 20,000 

The  American  Bison  Society  for  the  Montana  National  Herd.  .  10,526 

New  York  Zoological  Society,  total  about 20,000 

John  E.  Thayer,  purchase  of  game  preserve 5,000 

Caroline  Phelps  Stokes  Bird  Fund,  N.  Y.  Zoological  Society.  .  .  5.000 

Boone  and  Crockett  Fund  for  Preservation 5,000 

A  Friend  in  Rochester 2,500 

Henry  C.  Frick 1.500 

Samuel  Thorne 1  250 

Of  all  the  above,  the  only  endowment  funds  yielding  an  annual  in- 
come are  those  of  the  National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies  and  the 
Caroline  Phelps  Stokes  fund  of  $5,000  in  the  treasury  of  the  Zoological 
vSociety. 


396  •  OUR    VANISHING    WILD    LIFE 

A  fund  of  $25,000  per  year  for  five  years  has  been  guaranteed  by  the 
makers  of  shot-guns,  rifles  and  ammunition,  to  the  American  Game 
Protective  and  Propagation  Association.  This  is  like  a  limited  endow- 
ment. 

In  the  civilized  world  there  are  citizens  of  many  kinds ;  but  all  of  them 
can  be  placed  in  two  groups:  (1)  those  with  a  sense  of  duty  toward 
mankind,  and  who  will  do  their  duty  as  good  citizens;  and  (2)  those  who 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  meanly  and  sordidly  study  their  own  selfish 
interests,  who  never  do  aught  save  in  expectation  of  a  quick  return 
benefit,  and  who  recognize  no  such  thing  as  duty  toward  mankind  at  large. 

Men  and  women  of  the  first  class  are  honored  in  life,  mourned  when 
dead,  and  gratefully  remembered  by  posterity.  They  leave  the  world 
better  than  they  found  it,  and  their  lives  have  been  successful. 

Men  and  women  of  the  second  class  are  merely  so  many  pieces  of 
animated  furniture;  and  when  they  pass  out  the  world  cares  no  more 
than  when  old  chairs  are  thrown  upon  the  scrap-heap. 

There  are  many  men  so  selfish,  so  ignorant  and  mean  of  soul  that 
even  out  of  well-filled  purses  they  would  not  give  ten  dollars  to  save  the 
whole  bird  fauna  of  North  America  from  annihilation.  To  all  persons 
of  that  brand,  it  is  useless  to  appeal.  As  soon  as  you  find  one,  waste 
no  time  upon  him.  Get  out  of  his  neighborhood  as  quickly  as  you  can, 
and  look  for  help  among  real  MEN. 

The  wild  life  of  the  world  cannot  be  saved  by  a  few  persons,  even 
though  they  work  their  hearts  out  in  the  effort.  The  cause  needs  two 
million  more  helpers;  and  they  must  be  sought  in  Group  No.  1.  They 
are  living,  somewhere;  but  the  great  trouble  is  to  find  them,  before  it  is 
too  late. 

There  are  times  and  causes  in  which  the  good  citizen  has  no  option 
but  to  render  service.  The  most  important  of  such  causes  are :  the  relief 
of  suffering  humanity,  the  conservation  of  the  resources  of  nature,  and 
the  prevention  of  vandalism.  If  the  American  Nation  had  refused 
aid  to  stricken  San  Francisco,  the  callous  hard-heartedness  of  it  would 
have  shocked  the  world.  If  the  German  army  of  1871  had  destroyed  the 
art  treasures  and  the  libraries  of  Paris,  it  would  have  set  the  German 
nation  back  ten  centuries,  into  the  ranks  of  the  lowest  barbarians. 

And  yet,  in  America,  and  in  the  regions  now  being  scourged  by  the 
feather  trade,  a  wonderful  FAUNA  is  being  destroyed!  It  took  millions 
of  years  to  develop  that  marvelous  array  of  wild  life ;  and  when  gone  it 
never  can  he  replaced!  Yet  the  Army  of  Destruction  is  sweeping  it  away 
as  joyously  as  a  hired  laborer  cuts  down  a  field  of  corn. 

That  wild  life  can  be  saved!  If  done,  it  must  be  done  by  the  men 
and  women  of  Group  No.  1.  The  means  by  which  it  can  be  saved  are: 
Money,  labor  and  publicity.  Every  man  of  ordinary  means  and  intelligence 
can  contribute  either  money  or  labor.  The  men  on  the  firing  line  must 
not  be  expected  to  furnish  their  own  food  and  ammunition.  The  Workers 
MUST  be  provided  with  the  money  that  active  campaign  work  imper- 
atively demands!    Those  who  cannot  conveniently  or  successfully  labor 


GREATEST  NEEDS  OF   WILD-LIFE   CAUSE  397 

should  give  money  to  this  cause;  but  at  the  same  time,  every  good  citizen 
should  keep  in  touch  with  his  lawmaking  representatives,  and  in  times 
of  need  ask  for  votes  for  whatever  new  laws  are  necessary. 

With  money  enough  to  arouse  the  American  people  in  certain  ways, 
the  wild  life  of  North  America  (north  of  Mexico)  can  be  saved.  Money 
can  secure  labor  and  publicity,  and  the  People  will  do  the  rest.  For  this 
campaign  work  I  want,  and  must  have,  a  permanent  fund  of  $10,000  per 
annum, — cash  always  ready  for  every  emergency  in  field  work.  I  greatly 
need,  and  must  have,  immediately,  an  endowment  Wild-Life  Fund  of  at 
least  $100,000,  and  eventually  $250,000.  I  can  no  longer  "pass  the  hat" 
each  year.  This  is  needed  in  addition  to  the  several  thousands  of  dollars 
annually  being  expended  by  the  Zoological  Society  in  this  work.  The 
Society  is  already  doing  its  utmost  in  wild-life  protection,  just  as  it  is 
in  several  other  fields  of  activity. 

Outside  of  New  York  many  wealthy  men  will  say,  "Let  New  York 
do  it!"  That  often  is  the  way  when  national  campaigning  is  to  be  done. 
In  national  wild-life  protection  work.  New  York  is  to-day  bearing  about 
nine-tenths  of  the  burden.  It  is  my  belief  that  in  1912  outside  of  New 
York  City  less  than  $10,000  was  raised  and  expended  in  wild-life  pro- 
tection save  by  state  and  national  appropriations.  We  know  that  in  the 
year  mentioned  New  York  expended  $221,000  in  this  cause,  all  from 
private  sources. 

In  a  very  short  time  I  shall  call  for  the  $100,000  that  I  now  must 
have  as  an  endowment  fund  for  nation-wide  work,  to  be  placed  at  5^2 
per  cent  interest  for  the  $5,500  annual  income  that  it  will  yield.  How 
much  of  this  will  come  from  outside  the  State  of  New  York?  Some  of  it, 
I  am  sure,  will  come  from  Massachusetts  and  Pennsylvania;  but  will  any 
of  it  come  from  Cleveland,  Cincinnati,  Chicago,  St.  Louis  and  San 
Francisco  ? 

The  Duty  of  the  Hour 

I  have  now  said  my  say  in  behalf  of  wild  life.  Surely  the  path  of 
duty  toward  the  remnant  of  wild  life  is  plain  enough.  Will  those  who 
read  this  book  pass  along  my  message  tiiat  the  hour  for  a  revolution  has 
struck?  Will  the  millions  of  men  commanded  by  General  Apathy  now 
arouse,  before  it  is  too  late  to  act? 

Will  the  true  sportsmen  rise  up,  and  do  their  duty,  bravely  and  un- 
selfishly ? 

Will  the  people  with  wealth  to  give  away  do  their  duty  toward  wild  life 
and  humanity,  fairly  and  generously? 

Will  the  zoologists  awake,  leave  their  tables  in  their  stone  ])alaces 
of  peace,  and  come  out  to  the  firing-line  ? 

Will  the  lawmakers  heed  the  handwriting  on  the  wall,  and  make  laws 
that  represent  the  full  discharge  of  their  duty  toward  wild  life  and  humanity  ? 

Will  the  editors  beat  the  alarm-gong,  early  and  late,  in  season  and 
out  of  season,  until  the  people  awake? 

On  the  answers  to  these  questions  hang  the  fate  of  the  wild  creatures 
of  the  world, — their  prescrv^ation  or  their  extermination. 


I 


INDEX 


Abundance  of  wild  life,  1. 

Accuracy,  value  of,  in  campaigning,  262. 

Acklen,  J.  H.,  252. 

Actinomycosis,  82,  83. 

Adams,  Cyrus  C,  on  the  lion,  183. 

Adirondack  State  Park,  347. 

Adjutant,  123. 

Africa,  big  game  of,  181;  game  preserves 
in,  364,  367;  rinderpest  in,  83;  "soon  to 
be  shot  out,"  206. 

African  big  game  disappearing,  187. 

African  game  that  needs  exemption, 
383. 

Agriculture,  Department  of,  208,  212. 

Aigrette,  120. 

Akeley,  C.  E.,  186. 

Alabama,  42,  46,  59,  106;  deer  killed  in, 
172;  laws  of,  268. 

Alabama  Game  Commissioner,  252. 

Alaska,  46;  brown  bears  of,  178;  new  laws 
needed  in,  264;  game  of,  270;  Sitka 
National  Monument  in,  344. 

Alaska — Yukon  region,  157. 

Albatross,  steamer,  seals  taken  by,  40. 

Albatrosses,  Laysan,  138;  140. 

Alberta,  45,  51,  158,  162,  165;  at  fault  on 
antelope-shooting,  351 ;  laws  of  parks  of, 
352. 

Alden,  M.P.,  Percy,  135. 

Algonquin  National  Park,  351. 

Aliens,  game  wardens  killed  by,  103;  pro- 
hibited from  owning  firearms,  103; 
slaughter  of  song-birds  by,  100. 

Altai  Mountains  of  western  China,  190. 

American  Bison  Society,  180. 

American  Game  Protective  and  Propaga- 
tion Association,  257,  395. 

"American  Natural  History"  on  hawks 
and  owls,  224,  338. 

American,  North,  Fish  and  Game  Protec- 
tive Association,  385. 

American  private  game  preserves,  358. 

Amsterdam,  120. 

Animallai  Hills  to-day  and  in  1877,  188. 

"Animal  Life  in  Africa,"  on  status  of  set- 
tlers, 365. 

Animals,  predatory,  73;  caught  by  cats, 
73;  wild,  may  become  nuisances,  234. 


Antelope,  prong-horned,  2;  attempts  to 
transplant,  163;  in  Alberta,  51;  in  Mon- 
tana, 287;  in  Nevada,  288;  in  Texas,  51 ; 
in  Wyoming,  51;  lumpy  jaw  in,  83,  84; 
physical  weakness  of,  160;  present  status 
of,  159;  preserve  in  Montana,  2;  wrong 
to  kill,  351. 

Anthony  bill  for  migratory  birds,  267,  306. 

Antelopes,  African,  for  the  South,  242. 

Aphis  devouring  potato-tops,  213. 

Apple  crop,  losses  on,  210. 

Aquarium,  West  Indian  seals  in,  39. 

Areas  inhabitated  by  big  game,  157. 

Argali,  Siberian,  191. 

Arizona,  42,  46;  new  laws  needed  in,  270; 
national  monuments  in,  344. 

Arizona  elk  exterminated,  35. 

Arkansas,  42,  106;  new  laws  needed  in,  270. 

Army  of  Defense,  248,  257. 

Army  of  Destruction,  54,  59. 

Army  worm,  221. 

Arnold,  Craig  D.,  43. 

Ashe,  T.  J.,  133. 

Asia,  future  of  big  game  of,  188. 

Asiatic  game  that  should  be  close-seasoned, 
383. 

Askins,  Charles,  article  in  Recreation  by, 
107. 

Association  in  Pennsylvania  fighting  Game 
Commission,  245. 

Association,  Wool-Growers,  fighting  an- 
telope preserve,  2,  348. 

Astlcy,  Hubert  D.,  94. 

Atkinson,  George,  86. 

Atlanta  Journal,  106. 

Audubon  Societies,  National  Association 
of,  28,  254,  256,  291,  395. 

Auk,  Great,  9,  10. 

Austrians  in  Minnesota,  49. 

Australia,  animal  pests  in,  331,  332;  game 
preserves  in,  364. 

Automatic  and  pump  shot-guns,  61,  65, 
144;  campaign  against,  won  in  New  Jer- 
sey, 289;  denounced  by  organizations, 
152;  use  of,  prohibited  by  law,  152. 

Automobile,  use  of,  in  hunting  forbidden, 
60. 

Automobiles  detrimental  to  wild  life,  293. 


399 


400 


INDEX 


Avare,  Game  Warden  Henry,  49,  159,  287. 

Avery,  Carlos,  341. 

Avery  Island,  La.,  robin  slaughter  at,  108. 

Avicultural  Magazine,  94. 

Avocet,  230. 

Bag  insects,  213. 

Bag  limit,  in  Africa,  181,  186;  a  delusion, 
60,  66;  Alberta,  355;  British  Columbia, 
356;  Manitoba,  357;  Saskatchewan,  357. 
Baird,  Spencer  F.,  329. 
Baker,  Frank,  180. 
Bancroft,  W.  F.,  50. 
Barber,  Charles,  52. 

Barren  grounds  of  the  Arctic  regions,  157. 
Baynard,  Oscar  E.,  28. 
Bayne  law  against  sale  of  game  in  New 
York,  68;  bill,  252,  257;  breeding  game 
under,  370;  genesis  of,  307. 
Beal,  F.  E.  L.,  222. 

Bear,  black,  in  South  Carolina,  150,  179; 
grizzly,  ethics  of  hunting  the,  176;  al- 
most gone  from  United  States,  178;  Cal- 
ifornia grizzly,  41. 
Bears,  Alaskan  brown,  178;  alleged  dam- 
ages by,  178;  grizzly,  bag  limit  de- 
manded on,  356;  in  Yellowstone  Park, 
estimated,  ;336;  killed  by  Forestry  Bu- 
reau, 79;  of  Yellowstone  Park,  313. 
Beard,  Daniel  C,  cartoon  by,  55;  on  bird 

destruction,  77. 
Beaver  in  New  Brunswick,  52. 
Bedford,  Duke  of,  David's  deer  saved  by, 

36. 
Beebe,  C.  William,  69,  93,  115,  192;  chap- 
ter written  by,  195. 
Bell,  Rudolph,  102. 
Bell,  W.  B.,  44,  50. 
Berlin  feather  trade,  120. 
Beyer,  G.  E.,  48. 
Big  Horn  Game  Preserve,  349. 
Biological  Survey,  388 ;  on  duck  disease,  87 ; 

work  of,  249;  on  wood-duck,  28. 
Biology,    Elementary,    by    Peabody    and 

Hunt,  376. 
Bird,  Charles  S.,  343. 
Bird  boxes  distributed  by  J.  M.  Phillips, 

381. 
Bird  Day  in  various  states,  378. 
Bird  Refuges,  National,  full  Hst  of,  345. 
Birds,  becoming  extinct  in  North  America, 
17;    feeding   in    winter,  227;    killed  by 
cats,  73;   by  dogs,    76;   by  foxes,   332; 
by    mongoose,    333;    by  negroes,    105; 
by  telephone  wires,   77;    by  wild  ani- 
mals, 77;   destruction  of,  in   Far  East, 
195;  extinct,  9,  15;  food  habits  of  cer- 
tain,  218;   extinct  in    North   America, 
7;  in  distress,  82;  killed  in  New  York 
City,  101;  list  of,  that  devour  codling 


moth,  215;  threatened  with  extermina- 
tion, 18. 
Bird  skins  purchased  in  London,  116,  135. 
Bishop,  Dr.  Louis  B.,  98. 
Bison,  American,  now  living,  180;  last  of 
Colorado,   killed,   69,  272;  Yellowstone 
Park,  337;  wild,  in  Yellowstone  Park, 
336;  value  of,  2. 
Bison  herd,  Wichita  National,  179. 
Bison  ranges  created,  249. 
Bison  ranges.  National:  in  United  States, 

180;  in  Canada,  180. 
Bison   Society,   American,    395;   proposes 

National  herd,  342. 
Beaman,  D.  C,  273. 
Blackbird,  Crow,  222. 
Blackbirds,  destroy  cotton-boll  weevil,217 ; 

killed  as  "game,"  105. 
Black-Snake,  Pilot,  81. 
Blair,  Dr.  W.  Reid,  84,  85,  86. 
Blaubok,  extinct,  35. 
Blauvelt,  George  A,  251,  281. 
Blesbok  in  Cape  Colony,  185. 
Blinding  decoy  birds,  12,  97. 
Blooming  Grove  Park,  359. 
Bluebirds  killed  by  cold  weather,  9. 
Blue  Mountain  Forest  Association,  343. 
Bontebok  in  Cape  Colony,  185. 
Bob-White,  food  habits  of,  219. 
Boone  and  Crockett  Club,  152,  161,  256, 

383,  395. 
Boston  Society  of  Natural  History,  390. 
Bowdish,  B.  S.,  50. 
Boxes  for  birds  distributed,  381. 
Boy  Scouts  of  America,  appeal  to,  32. 
Bradley,    Guy    M.,    killed    by    a    plume- 
hunter,  26,  27. 
Brazil,  birds'  plumage  from,  122. 
Breeding,   ducks  in  captivity,  373;  game 

and  fur  in  captivity,  369,  374. 
Breeding  wild  animals  need  seclusion,  322. 
Brett,   Lieut.-Col.   L.   M.,  animal  census 

from,  336. 
Brewster,  William,  24,  43,  48. 
Brimley,  H.  H.  and  C.  S.,  44,  50. 
Bringing  back  birds  and  game,  313,  323; 

vanishing  species,  322. 
British  Columbia,  45,  51,  157,  158,  162, 
165;  game  conditions  in,  356;  game  pre- 
serves in,  353. 
British     East     Africa,     remarkable     bag 

"limit"  in,  181,  186. 
Bronx  River,  ducks  killed  by  pollution  of, 

92. 
Brooklyn  Institute,  390. 
Brooks,  Earle  A.,  51. 

Brown,  William  Harvey,  at  Salisbury  184. 
Brown,  William  P.,  51. 
Bryan,  W.  A.,  137,  139. 
Buckland,  James,  125,  135,  136. 


INDEX 


401 


Buckskin  Mountain,  343. 

Buffalo  Academy  of  Sciences,  390. 

Buffalo  in  Cape  Colony,  1S.5. 

Buffalo,   American,   now  living,    180;   see 

Bison. 
Buffalo  Park,  Alberta,  352. 
Bunting,  Snow,  8,  58;  killed  for  food,  68. 
Burnham,  John  B.,  251 ;  portrait,  251 ;  2.52, 

257, 290. 
Burtch,  Verdi,  93. 
Bustard  being  exterminated,  119. 
Butcher  bird,  SO. 
Butler,  A.  L.,  247. 
Butler,  Amos  W.,  43,  47. 

CaHfornia,  42,  47,  59,  65,  106,  165;  griz- 
zlies, 178;  new  laws  needed  in  271; 
Academy  of  Sciences,  391 ;  National 
monuments  of,  344;  State  Game  Pre- 
serve, 349;  University  of,  390. 

Call,  San  Francisco,  263. 

CaUisti,  Superb,  115. 

Camp-Fire  Club  of  America,  152,  256,  353, 
384;  code  of  ethics  of,  384. 

Camp-Fire  Club  of  Detroit,  338,  385. 

Campion,  C,  14. 

Camp  laborers  as  game  destroyers,  71. 

Canada,  45;  game  laws  and  preserves  in, 
350. 

Cape  Province,  South  Africa,  big  game  in, 
185. 

Carbonell,  E.  T.,  46. 

Caribou,  83;  in  Nova  Scotia,  52;  in  gen- 
eral, status  of,  173;  killed  for  their 
tongues,  46,  269;  Osborn,  357;  slaugh- 
tered and  wasted,  in  Quebec,  70. 

Caribou  disease,  83. 

Carleton,  L.  T.,  283. 

Carnegie  Institute  of  Washington,  391. 

Carrick,  Penn.,  bird  day  at,  379. 

Cartridges,  estimated  annual  production 
of,  150. 

Cat  and  its  victim,  76. 

Cats,  birds  destroyed  by,  73,  81. 

Caterpillars  eaten  by  shore-birds,  231. 

Caton,  John  Dean,  359. 

Cause,  choice  of  a,  258. 

Cedar  Bird,  eaten  as  "game,"  106. 

Cereals,  losses  on,  from  insects,  212. 

Corbin  bison  herd,  342. 

Chambers,  Fred.  W.,  51. 

Chamois,  slaughter  of  jirotected,  in  Swit- 
zerland, 321. 

Chapman,  Arthur,  45,  50. 

Charles,  Salem  D.,  253. 

Cheney,  Henry  W.,  240. 

Chieago  Academy  of  Sciences,  391. 

Chicago  as  a  plague-spot  for  sale  of  game, 
280;  devours  Norway  ptarmigan,  69; 
University  of,  392. 


Chimpanzee,  187. 

China  barren  of  wild  life,  192;  raked  and 

scraped  for  ducks,  69. 
Chinch-bug,  209,  210. 
Chinese  now  buyers  of  game,  198. 
Christian,  L.  T.,  51. 
Cigarette  beetle,  212. 
Cincinnati  Zoological  Gardens,  11. 
Clark,  I.  C,  50. 
Clark,  W.  A.,  231. 
Claxton,  Dr.  P.  P.,  on  Tennessee  robin 

slaughter,  107. 
Clergy,  Italian,  duty  of,  103. 
Cleveland-Cliffs  Iron  Co.,  371. 
Close  season  law  in  New  York,  90. 
Close    season,    at    discretion,    89;    long, 

needed,  62. 
Clubs  opposed  to  automatic  guns,  153. 
Coccidiosus,  intestinal,  in  ducks,  87. 
Cock  of  the  Rock,  113. 
Codling  moth,  birds  that  devour  the,  215. 
Cold  storage  of  game  in  New  York,  68. 
Cold  storage  warehouses  and  steamers  in 

China,  200. 
Collier's  Weekly,  263. 
Colonist,  Victoria,  263. 
Colorado,  42,  47,  59,  71;  new  laws  needed 

in,    272;   game-breeding   laws   of,    369; 

national  monuments  of,  344. 
Comity  between  states,  lack  of,  266. 
Commission,  New  York  Conservation,  252. 
Commissions,  State  Game,  250. 
Comparative  Zoology,  Museum  of,  390. 
Condor,  California,  21,  22,  119,  123. 
Conference  of  Powers  on  African  wild  life, 

364. 
Congo  Free  State,  187. 
Congress,  267;  acts  of,  for  wild  life,  249; 

creates  National  Bison  Range,  342,  343; 

creates  National  monuments,  344 ;  saves 

the  starving  elk,  338. 
Connaught  National  Park,  355. 
Connecticut,   42,   47,   59,    106;  new  laws 

needed  in,  275;  protects  wood-duck,  28. 
Conrad  bison  herd,  342. 
Conrad,  Charles  H.,  340. 
Corliin,  Austin,  360;  deer  sold  by,  371. 
Cormorant,  Pallas,  9,  11. 
Corn  and  hogs,  and  wild  life  protection, 

281 
Corn,'losses  on,  208,  212. 
Corn-root  worm,  208. 
Cornell  Universitv,  392. 
Cotton-boll  weevil,  215,  216,  221. 
Cotton,  loss  on,  210,  212,  215;  rise  in  price 

of,  affects  birds,  110. 
Cougars  destroyed  in   British   Columbia, 

356. 
Country  Life  in  America,  374. 
Cox,  J.  D.,  50. 


402 


INDEX 


Coyotes,  53;  destroyed,  79;  destroyed  in 
British  Columbia,  356. 

Crandall,  L.  S.,  on  breeding  mallard  duck, 
373. 

Cranes  in  Alberta,  355. 

Crane,  Whooping,  18. 

Crater  Lake  National  Park,  343. 

Crayfishes  eaten  by  shore-birds,  231. 

Credit  for  work  done,  264. 

Cree  Indians,  8. 

Crow,  ducklings  destroyed  by,  80. 

Crow,  F.  L.,  robins  slaughtered  by,  106. 

Cruelty  of  "aigrette"  hunters,  130;  of  al- 
batross killers,  141. 

Cuppy,  W.  B.,  deer  raised  by,  171. 

Curculio,  210. 

Curlew,  Eskimo,  9,  14,  228;  long-billed, 
18. 

Currituck  County  wild-fowl  slaughter,  292, 
311. 

Currituck  Sound,  N.  C,  64,  134. 

Cuthbert  Rookery,  131. 

Cut-worm,  209,  221. 

Dakota,  vSouth,  National  monuments  of, 
344. 

Dallas,  Tex.,  disgraced  by  robin  slaughter, 
106. 

Dalton  and  Young,  121. 

Damages  by  deer  in  Vermont,  241. 

David's  deer,  8,  35. 

Davis,  C.  B.,  narrative  of  elk  slaughter,  70. 

Davis,  Capt.  M.  B.,  45,  50. 

Deadfall  traps  in  Burma,  198. 

Deer,  accept  protection,  313;  as  a  food 
supply,  234,  242;  cash  value  of,  241; 
caught  in  Hudson  River,  82;  damages 
to  crops  by,  240;  danger  from,  371;  in 
New  York  City,  91;  killed  in  Louisiana, 
5;  killed  in  Vermont  since  1897,  240; 
pamphlet  on  raising,  371;  possibilities 
in,  236;  present  status  of,  173;  slaugh- 
ter in  Montana,  287;  value  of,  371; 
black-tailed,  173;  European  red,  372; 
fallow,  372;  Indian  sambar,  372;  red, 
of  Europe,  372;  white-tailed,  breed- 
ing, 369;  future  of,  171;  in  Iowa,  171; 
killed  in  various  states,  172;  portrait  of, 
237;  weights  of,  in  Vermont,  371. 

Defects  in  the  protection  of  western  big 
game,  302. 

Defenders  of  wild  life,  248. 

Pelaware,  42,  47,  106;  new  laws  needed 

,     in,  275. 

Denmead,  Talbott,  48. 

Destroyers  of  wild  life,  248. 

Destruction,  Army  of,  54,  55,  59. 

Detroit,  Camp-Fire  Club  of,  338. 

Dike,  A.  C,  on  cats,  75. 

Dill,  Homer  R.,  139,  140. 


Dimock,  Julian  A.,  131. 

Diseases,  destruction  of  wild  life  by,  82. 

District  of  Columbia,  new  laws  needed  in, 
276. 

Ditmars,  Raymond  L.,  81. 

Dix,  Governor  John  A.,  134,  252,  290. 

Dodo,  17,  28,  281. 

Dogs  as  destroyers  of  birds,  76. 

Doves  killed  and  eaten  as  "game,"  106; 
killed  1909-10  in  Louisiana,  5. 

Dowitcher,  18,  31,  228,  230. 

Downham,  C.  F.,  124,  127,  129,  134. 

Downtrodden  hunters  and  anglers,  204.  • 

Duck  disease,  87. 

Duck,  Labrador,  9,  11;  mallard,  breeding 
of,  in  captivity,  373. 

Duck  breeder,  ducks  killed  by,  57. 

Duck  Mountain  Game  Preserve,  354. 

Duck-shooting  preserves,  361. 

Ducks,  accept  protection,  317,  318;  in  dis- 
tress from  severe  winter,  92;  killed  1909- 
10  in  Louisiana,  5. 

Dutcher  fund,  Mary,  395. 

Dutcher  law  against  bird  millinery,  115. 

Dutcher,  WiUiam,  28,  217,  256,  291;  de- 
nounces automatic  guns,  151. 

Duties  of  the  hour,  53,  397. 

Duty  of  nations,  states  and  lawmakers, 
266;  of  zoologists,  386. 

Dyche,  Lewis  Lindsay,  43,  389. 

Eagle,  golden,  destroys  sheep  and  goats, 
78;  in  British  Columbia,  356. 

Eagles  being  exterminated,  118,  119. 

Ear-worm,  209. 

Eastgate,  Alfred,  44,  50. 

Eaton,  Howard,  51. 

Edgell,  George  S.,  360. 

Egret,  American,  26;  colonies  in  Florida, 
28;  preserve  of  E.  A.  Mcllhenny,  26, 
319;  snowy,  26. 

Egrets,  being  exterminated,  119,  121,  122, 
124,  126;  slaughter  of,  in  Venezuela,  129; 
young,  starving  on  nest,  132. 

Eland  in  Cape  Colony,  185. 

Elephant,  Congo  Pygmy,  187. 

Elephant  Seals  taken  by  C.  H.  Townsend, 
40. 

Elk,  Arizona,  now  extinct,  34;  calves  killed 
by  pumas,  78;  distribution  of  living,  167; 
easily  bred  in  captivity,  370;  fed  in  Jack- 
son Hole,  320;  of  Yellowstone  Park  and 
Jackson  Hole,  337;  progressive  exter- 
mination of,  164;  saved  by  Congress  in 
1911,  166;  Seton's  map  of  former  and 
existing  ranges,  163;  slaughter  on  Buffalo 
Flats,  Mont.,  70;  supplv  of  elk  wasted, 
166. 

Elk  Island  Park,  352,  353. 

Elk  River  Game  Preserve,  B.  C,  353. 


INDEX 


403 


Elm  beetles,  213. 

Elrod,  Morton  J.,  49. 

Emeu,  123. 

Engel,  C.  M.,  on  the  lion,  183. 

Epicure  and  quail,  221. 

Espeut,  W.  B.,  332. 

Estes  Park,  274. 

Ethics  of  sportsmanship,    143,    144,   382, 

384. 
Eaton's  "Birds  of  New  York,"  13. 
Evans,   Game  Commissioner  Kell}^   350, 

351. 
Ewbank,  E.  L.,  44,  50. 
Exempt  species,  lists  of  proposed,  383. 
Extermination,  African  animals  in  line  for, 

187;  birds  threatened  with,  18;  defined, 

8;  of  big  game,  158;  of  birds  for  women's 

hats,  115;  of  birds  of  paradise,  125;  of 

species,  by  states,  42. 
Extinct  species  of  North  American  birds, 

7. 

Falcon,  perigrine,  226. 

Fallow  deer,  372;  introduced  in  Lambay, 
328. 

Farmers,  supineness  of,  4,  279. 

Farming,  fox,  374. 

Feather  sales  in  London,  120,  121,  122. 

Federal  migratory  bird  law  needed,  260, 
304-306 . 

Felton,  W.  R.,  49,  348. 

"Fence"  for  sale  of  stolen  game,  in  Wash- 
ington, 276. 

Ferry,  John  F.,  19. 

Fever  tick  eaten  by  plovers,  229. 

Field,  George  W.,  24,  253. 

Field,  The  American,  263. 

Field  and  Stream,  263. 

Figgis  &  Co.,  121. 

Fines,  schedule  of  suitable,  260. 

Finley,  W.  L.,  50. 

Firearms,  owned  by  natives  in  India,  189; 
unfair,  143,  148,  149,  1.50. 

Fisher,  Walter  K.,  137. 

Flamingo,  American,  20. 

Fleming,  James  W.,  290. 

Flies  eaten  by  quail,  221. 

Florida,  43,  47,  105;  deer  killed  in,  172; 
new  laws  needed  in,  276. 

Flycatchers,  222;  destroy  boll  weevil,  217; 

Foes  of  wild  life,  73. 

Food  for  winter  birds,  227. 

Food  habits  of  certain  birds,  218. 

Food  supply  of  deer,  possible,  236. 

Forbes,  Professor,  210. 

Forbush,  E.  H.,  14;  on  heath  hen,  24; 
quotation  from,  75;  on  the  Sunday  gun, 
153;  on  upland  plover,  21,  31;  portrait 
of,  251,  253. 

Forest  and  Stream,  263. 


Forestry  Bureau,  United  States,  388;  on 

predatory  animals,  79. 
Forests,    losses   on,    210,    212;    National, 

should  be  game  preserves,  267 ;  of  the 

Far  East,  192;  preservation  of  National, 

338. 
Fox,  black  or  "silver,"  374. 
Fox  pest  in  Australia,  331. 
Fox  skins  sold  in  London,  193. 
Foxes  as  bird  destroyers,  78. 
Fruit,  losses  on,  210,  212. 
France,  bird  plumage  trade  in,  117;  song 

birds  sold  for  food  in,  98. 
Frazer  River  Game  Preserve,  353. 
Frick,  Henry  C,  395. 
Fullerton,  Samuel,  341. 
Fund,  wild  life  endowment,  397. 
Funk  Island,  11. 
Fur-bearing  mammals  killed  in  Louisiana, 

5. 
Fur  News  Magazine,  193. 
Furs,  degradation  of  fashions  in,  105. 
Fur  Seal,  249. 
Furs  sold  in  London,  193. 

Game,  and  agriculture,  234-242;  as  a  state 
asset,  283;  belongs  to  the  People,  143; 
big,  of  North  America,  155,  157;  bill, 
how  to  draw  a,  260 ;  birds,  as  a  mass,  3 ;  in 
Yellowstone  Park,  336;  in  Glacier  Park, 
340;  killed  in  Louisiana,  5;  law,  how  to 
make  a  new,  2.58;  market  value  of,  309; 
dead  game  in  New  York,  311 ;  of  Africa, 
absurd  bag  limit  on,  181 ;  preserves,  map 
of  national,  339;  slaughter  with  auto- 
matic guns,  147,  148,  149,  1.50. 

"Game  Birds,  Wild  Fowl  and  Shore  Birds," 
253. 

Game-hog,  58,  244;  not  easily  educated, 
2.58. 

Game  preserve,  see  Preserve. 

"Garceros,"  126,  127. 

Gardiner,  Montana,  70,  337;  antelope  at- 
tacked in,  91. 

Gaspesian  F.  F.  and  G.  Preserve,  355. 

Geay,  F.,  127,  129. 

Geer  vs.  Connecticut,  decision  in  Supreme 
Court,  3,  143. 

Geese,  killed  1909-10  in  Louisiana,  5; 
slaughter  of,  by  automatic  guns,  148, 
149,  150. 

GemslDok  in  Cape  Colony,  185. 

Georgia,  43,  47,  106;  deer  killed  in,  172; 
new  laws  needed  in,  278. 

Gerard,  W.  W.,  52. 

Gerhardt,  Fred.,  51. 

German  Carp,  329. 

Gibb,  Walter  S.,  340. 

Glacier  Park,  Alberta,  352,  338;  game  in, 
340. 


404 


INDEX 


Glenn  Countv  Club,  record  slaughter  at, 
65,  148. 

Globe,  New  York,  263 

Globe-Democrat,  St.  Louis,  263. 

Goat,  White  Mountain,  present  status  of, 
164. 

Goats,  in  Glacier  Park,  340;  killed  for  food, 
70;  mountain,  killed  by  eagles,  78. 

Goding,  Edward  N.,  253. 

Godwit,  231;  Hudsonian,  18. 

Goeldi,  E.  A.,  20. 

Goodnight,  Charles,  50,  342. 

Gorilla,  187. 

Goshawk,  226. 

Grand  Canyon  Game  Preserve,  343. 

Grant,  General,  National  Park,  344. 

Grant,  Madison,  247;  portrait  of,  254; 
game  laws  proposed  by,  46. 

Grasshoppers  eaten  by  quail,  221;  bv 
shore-birds,  229. 

Gray,  J.  C,  protector  of  ducks,  318. 

Grinnell,  G.  B.,  256. 

Grinnell,  Joseph,  on  California  condor, 
22. 

Grisol,  Mayeul,  126,  129. 

Grizzly,  California,  almost  extinct,  41, 
178;  punishing  an  impudent,  314;  silver- 
tip,  in  British  Columbia,  178. 

Grosbeak,  223. 

Grouse  becoming  extinct  in  California,  47 ; 
Idaho,  47;  Montana,  49;  North  Dakota, 
50;  Virginia,  51;  Wisconsin,  51;  Wyom- 
ing, 51. 

Grouse,  Canada,  52. 

Grouse,  pinnated,  diminishing  in  Man- 
itoba, 52;  Illinois,  47;  Indiana,  47;  Iowa, 
47;  Kansas,  48;  Missouri,  49;  North 
Dakota,  50;  Oklahoma,  50;  increasing 
in  Manitoba,  52;  shot  in  Kansas,  245. 

Grouse,  Prairie  Sharp-Tailed,  25. 

Grouse,  Ruffed,  illegally  shipped,  66,  67. 

Grouse,  Sage,  25;  in  California,  47;  Idaho, 
47 ;  becoming  extinct  in  Montana,  49. 

Guadaloupe  Island,  elephant  seals  on,  40. 

Guanaco  ''n  Patagonia,  169. 

Guerrillas  of  destruction,  63. 

Guessaz,  O.  L.,  51. 

Gulls,  slaughtered  on  Laysan  Island,  139; 
and  terns  saved  by  Audubon  Societies, 
320. 

Gunners,  two,  of  Kansas  City,  61 ;  who  kill 
to  the  limit,  56,  58,  65 ;  will  not  give  up 
shooting  "rights,"  305. 

Guns,  automatic  or  machine,  153;  bill  to 
prohibit  use  of,  153;  increase  in  dead- 
liness  of,  145;  four  machine,  144;  sta- 
tistics of,  145,  150;  swivel  and  punt, 
suppressed,  143. 

Gurkha  soldiers  destroying  game,  190. 

Gypsy  Moth,  211  ;  cost  of  fighting,  330. 


Hagenbeck,  Carl,  126;  agent  for,  372. 

Hale  &  Sons,  121. 

Halifax,  Curator  of  Museum  at,  52. 

Hankow,  cold  storage  plant  in,  200. 

Harrison,  George  L.,  experience  of,  190. 

Hartebeest  in  Cape  Colony,  185. 

Hathaway,  Harry  S.,  45,  50. 

Hawaiian   Islands  Reservation   (Laysan), 

142. 
Hawk,  Cooper's,  80,  225;  sharp-shinned, 

81;  pigeon,  80;  duck,  80;  red-shouldered, 

225;  red-tailed,  225. 
Hawk  law  of  Pennsylvania,  223. 
Hawks,  being  exterminated,  119;  general 

status  of,  223. 
Hay,  loss  on,  210,  212. 
Heath  hen,  8,  48;  present  status  of,  24. 
Henshaw,  Henry  W.,  pamphlet  by,  216. 
Herald,  New  York,  263. 
Heron,     colonies    under    protection,    28; 

plumage  sold  in  London,  121,  126. 
Hessian  fly,  210. 
Hippopotami  for  the  South,  242. 
Himalayan  birds  being  exterminated,  196. 
Hodge,  C.  P.,  14. 

Hog-and-corn  area  of  extermination,  281. 
Holman.  Ralph,  253. 
Hooper,  Franklin  W.,  390. 
Hopkins,  A.  D.,  211. 
Hornaday,  W.  T.,  bison  census,  180;  code 

of  ethics  written  by,  384. 
Horse,  bicolored  wild,  192. 
Hough,  Emerson,  gloomv  views  of,  206. 
Howard,  F.  M.,  221. 
Howard,  James,  43,  48. 
Hufifman,  L.  A.,  49,  348. 
Hume,  A.  O.,  197. 
Hummingbirds,  being  exterminated,   120; 

skins  sold  in  London,  116,  121,  124. 
Humphrey,  J.  J.,  150. 
Humphrey,  William  E.,  340. 
Hungarian  partridge,  327. 
Hungarians,  song  birds  killed  by,  102. 
Hunt,  Arthur  E.,  text  book  by,  376. 
Hunter,  W.  D.,  210. 
Hunting  licenses  in  all  states,  59. 
Hurd,  Lyman  E.,  2.53. 

Ibis  being  exterminated,  lis,  119. 

Ibis,  Scarlet,  18,  20. 

Idaho,  43,  47,  59,  106,  165;  grizzlies,  178; 

new  laws  needed  in,  278;  slaughter  of 

starving  elk  in,  90;  state  game  preserve 

349. 
Illinois,  43,  47,  59,  106;  new  laws  needed 

in,  279. 
Impeyan  pheasant  not  bred  in  captivity, 

198. 
In-and-in  breeding  in  wild  animals,  328. 
Independent,  New  York. 


INDEX 


405 


Index- Appeal,  Pittsburgh,  263. 

India,  sasin  antelope  in,  82. 

Indiana,  43,  47,  59;  new  laws  needed  in, 
280. 

Indianapolis  assists  in  exterminating  bird- 
of-paradise,  280. 

Indians,  and  game  of  Alaska,  269;  as 
game  exterminators,  46;  rights  of,  in 
game,  384;  unjustifiable  license  given  to, 
176. 

Insect  ravages  in  New  South  Wales,  233. 

Insectivorous  birds  killed  for  food  in  Min- 
nesota, 49. 

Insects,  eaten  bv  quail,  220;  eaten  by  shore- 
birds,  229-233;  losses  by,  208,  212. 

In  the  Open  magazine,  263. 

Introduced  pests,  330;  English  sparrow, 
334;  fox  in  Australia,  332;  gypsy  moth, 
330;  mongoose,  332;  pheasants,  325; 
rabbits  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand, 
331. 

Iowa,  43,  47,  59;  new  laws  needed  in,  280; 
deer  in,  171. 

Irocjuois  Theatre  fire,  lesson  of  the,  280. 

Italian  peninsula  a  migration  route,  94. 

Italian  ])opulation,in  Minnesota,  49;  must 
be  educated,  103. 

Italians,  slaughter  of  song  birds  by,  94, 
102;  song  Ijirds  caught  alive  by,  97; 
song  birds  sold  as  food  by,  98;  vulture, 
eaten  by,  101. 

Jabiru,  123. 

Jackson  Hole,  starving  elk  of,  320,  337. 

Jacobs,  Captain  of  the  Thetis,  139. 

Jacobs,  J.  Warren,  217. 

Japanese  poachers  on  Laysan  Island,  139. 

Jasper  Park,  352,  353. 

Jones,  C.  J.  ("Buffalo"),  78,  314;  captures 

nine  pumas,  343. 
Jordan,  Arthur,  182. 
Journal,  Minneapolis,  263. 
judd,  Sylvester,  220. 

Kadiak   Island,   bear   slaughter  ])roposed 

on,  269. 
Kaegebehn,  Ferdinand,  35. 
Kaibab  Plateau,  catalo  herd  on,  343. 
Kalbfus,  Joseph,  254;  portrait,  255,  326, 

346. 
Kamchatka,  193. 
Kangaroo  skins,  194. 
Kansas,  43,  48,  59;  new  laws  needed  in, 

281;  University  of,  389. 
Kansas  City  gunners,  61. 
Kashmir,  game  protection  in,  190. 
Keller,  H.  W.,  47. 
Kelly,  A.  F.,  332. 
Kennard,  Frederic  H.,  340. 


Kentucky,  43,  106;  new  laws  needed  in, 
282;  robbed  of  game  for  Pittsburgh, 
67. 

Kcuka  Lake,  ducks  in  distress  on,  93. 

Kildeer  Plover,  228,  229,  230;  portrait  of^ 
230. 

Killing  men  by  "mistake,"  260. 

Kingfisher,  Belted,  113. 

Kite,  White-Tailed,  18-23. 

Klamath  Lakes  of  Oregon,  64. 

Kleinschmidt,  Frank  E.,  46,  269. 

Kudu  in  Cape  Colny,  185. 

Laborers  as  game-killers,  71. 

Labrador,  157,  355. 

Lacey,  John  F.,  247. 

Laglaize,  Leon,  126,  127,  128,  129. 

Lampson  &  Co.,  C.  M.,  193. 

Lark,  meadow,  eaten  as  game,  106,  222. 

Laurentides  Park,  354. 

Law,  making  close  seasons  by  petition,  90; 
of  Nature,  an  inexorable,  63;  prohibiting 
firearms  to  aliens,  103;  proposed  for  ani- 
mal nuisances,  235;  proposed  for  Sunday 
gun,  153. 

Lawmakers,  work  with,  262. 

Lawrence,  S.  C,  331. 

Laws,  absolutely  necessary  to  wild  life, 
245;  how  to  secure  new,  387;  new, 
needed,  265. 

Lawyer,  George  A.,  290. 

Laysan  Island,  bird  tragedy  on,  137. 

League  of  American  Sportsmen,  102,  152. 

Leek,  S.  N.,  51,  320,  337;  elk  photographs 
by,  167. 

Lemon,  Frank  E.,  136. 

Le  vSouef,  W.  H.  D.,  332. 

Lewis  and  Clark  Cluli,  152,  383. 

Lewis  &  Peet,  121,  124,  126. 

Licenses,  hunting,  in  all  states,  59. 

"Life  Histories  of  Northern  Animals,"  374. 

Lincoln,  Robert  Page,  49. 

Lion,  map  of  disappearance  of  the,  183. 

Lobbying  a  duty,  250. 

Locusts  eaten  by  shore-birds,  230. 

Lodge,  Senator  Henry  Cabot,  338. 

London  Chamber  of  Commerce,  122,  127, 
136. 

London  feather  trade,  115,  117. 

Lord,  William  R.,  253. 

Loring,  J.  Alden,  wild  birds  tamed  by,  314. 

Louisiana,  43,  48,  59,  105,  106,  108;  deer 
killed  in,  172;  game  in,  4;  new  laws  need- 
ed in,  282;  state  game  prcscrs-e,  361; 
state  wild-fowl  refuge,  349. 

Lumpy-jaw  in  antelope  and  sheep,  83. 

Lydekker,  Richard,  on  rabbits,  331. 

Lynxes  destroyed,  79. 

Lyre  bird  being  exterminated,  1  IS,  125. 


406 


INDEX 


MacDougal,  Dr.  D.  T.,  46. 

McAtee,  W.  L.,  on  enemies  of  codling  moth 
215;  on  "Our  Vanishing  Shore-Birds," 
228-233. 

McBride,  scout,  counts  game  in  Yellow- 
stone Park,  336. 

Mcllhenny,  Edward  A.,  5,  255,  349,  395; 
on  egret  preserve,  26;  on  Louisiana  birds, 
48;  robin  slaughter  mentioned  by,  108; 
testimony  from,  on  shed  plumes,  129. 

McLean,  Marshall,  on  codification  of  New 
York  game  laws,  290. 

McLean,  Senator  George  P.,  275;  bill  for 
migratory  birds,  267,  306. 

Macaw,  Gosse's,  16;  Guadeloupe,  16. 

Mackay,  G.  H.,  14. 

Mail  and  Express,  New  York,  263. 

Maine,  43,  48,  59,  157;  deer  killed  in,  172; 
new  laws  needed  in,  283;  protects  wood- 
duck,  28. 

Malayana,  wild  life  in,  192. 

Mammals,  wholly  or  nearly  extinct,  34. 

Manitoba,  45,  52;  game  reserves  of, 
354. 

Map,  of  game  preserves  in  Africa,  366;  of 
National  game  preserves,  339;  of  states 
prohibiting  sale  of  game,  307 ;  of  wilder- 
ness area  of  North  America,  156;  used 
in  campaign  for  Bayne  law,  309. 

Market-gunners,  63,  64,  65. 

Marlatt,  C.  L.,  on  losses  by  insects,  207, 
212. 

Marlin  Fire-Arms  Co.,  144,  146. 

Marsh  Island,  a  market-gunner  on,  64; 
map  of,  361. 

Martin,  A.  P.,  214. 

Martin,  Purple,  217;  shot  for  food,  219; 
disappearing,  48. 

Maryland,  43,  48,  105,  106;  deer  killed  in, 
172;  new  laws  needed  in,  284. 

Mashonaland,  186. 

Massachusetts,  43,  48,  59,  115,  253;  deer 
killed  in,  172;  excellent  laws  of,  284; 
Fish  and  Game  Protective  Association, 
385;  Game  Commission,  253;  protects 
wood-duck,  28;  State  Board  of  Agricul- 

Megan'tic  Club,  360. 

Meloy,  Andrew  D.,  388. 

Merkel,  Hermann  W.,  227. 

Mershon,  W.  B.,  11,  49. 

Mesa  Verde  National  Park,  344. 

Mexico,  169;  elephant  seals  of,  41;  vSierre 
Madre  of,  157. 

Meyer,  A.  H.,  129. 

Mice  and  rats  destroyed  by  owls,  224. 

Michigan,  43,  49,  59,  157;  deer  killed  in, 
172;  good  laws  of,  285. 

Migratory  birds,  federal  protection  de- 
manded for,  266. 


Miles,   George  W.,   Indiana  Game   Com- 
missioner, 47. 
Miller,  Frank  M.,  on  wood-duck,  48. 
Miller,  H.  N.,  49. 

Milliners'  Association,  American,  307. 
MilUnery,  bird  extermination  for,  115. 
Miners  as  game  destroyers  in  Wyoming, 

51. 
Minnesota,  43,  49,  106,  157;  deer  killed  in, 

172;   National  Game  Preserve  in,  341; 

new  laws  needed  in,  285. 
Mississippi,  43,  105,  106,  165;  deer  killed 

in,  172;  new  laws  needed  in,  286. 
Missouri,  44,  49,  59,  106;  new  laws  needed 

in,  286. 
Mitchell,   Consul  Mason,   and  the  takin, 

191. 
Mitchell,  W.  I.,  317. 
Monachus  tropicalis  almost  extinct,  39. 
Monal  pheasant  skins,  197. 
Money,  need  for,  257,  393,  394,  397. 
Mongoose  pest  in  various  islands,  332. 
Montana,  44,  49,  59,  158;  grizzlies  of,  178; 

National    Bison  Range,   180;    National 

monuments  of,  344;  new  laws  needed  in, 

287;  state  game  preserves,  348,  349. 
Monuments,  National,  full  list  of,  344. 
Moody,  C.  S.,  43,  47. 
Moore,  John  D.,  290. 
Moose,  in  Alaska,  176;  increasing  in  New 

Brunswick,  52,  175;  in  Glacier  Park,  340; 

in   the   United   States,    175;   season   in 

Wyoming,  51. 
Mosquitoes  eaten  by  quail,  221. 
Moth,  codling,  210,  214;  gypsy,  211. 
Mt.  Olympus  National  Monument,  340. 
Mulberry,  Russian,  as  food-tree  for  birds, 

379. 
Murder  of  wild  animals,  34. 
Museum,  American,  388;  Carnegie,  391; 

Field,  391;   Milwaukee  Public,  389;   of 

Comparative     Zoology,     390;      United 

States  National,  390. 
Musk-Ox,  previous  slaughter  of,  176. 

Napier,   Ernest,   50;  arouses   New  Jersey 

against    machine    guns,    289;    portrait, 

251,  253. 
Nash,  C.  W.,  52. 

National  Academy  of  Sciences,  391. 
National  measures  for  wild-life  protection, 

266. 
National  Museum,  United  States,  36,  37, 

390. 
National  organizations  of  New  York  City, 

254. 
National  Zoological  Park,  391. 
Natives,  rights  of,  in  game,  384. 
Nebraska,  44,  49,  59,  106;  protection  for 

extinct  game  in,  287. 


INDEX 


407 


Needs  of  wild-life  caus€^,  greatest,  393. 
Negroes,   song-bird   slaughter  b^•,   in   the 

South,  108,  109,  110. 
Nelson,  E.  W.,  35. 

Nepal,  ilestruction  of  pheasants  in,  191). 
Nets  used  in  taking  pigeons,  12,  13. 
Nevada,  44,  lOtt;  new  laws  needed  in,  288. 
New  Brunswick,  45,  152,  157;  game  laws 

of,  357. 
Newfoundland,  157. 
New   Hampshire,    44,    49,    59,    157;    deer 

killed  in,  172;  new  laws  needed  in,  288. 
New  Jersey,  28,  44,  49,  59,  115,  253;  deer 

killed  in,  172;  few  new  laws  needed  in, 

288;  game  commissioner,  253. 
New  Mexico,  44,  59,  106;  good  game  laws 

in,  289;  National  monuments  of,  344. 
New  South  Wales,  birds  destroyed  in,  233. 
New  York,   44,   49,    59,    115,    157,    165; 

Acadmy  of  Sciences,  391 ;  Conservation 

Commission,  252;    deer   killed   in,   172; 

excellent  laws  of,  289;    nuisance  law  of, 

235;  protects  wood-duck,  28;  state  game 

preserve  of,  347. 
New  York  City  formerly  a  "fence,"  68; 

wild  deer  in,  91. 
News,  Buffalo,  263. 

Newspapers,  value  of,  in  campaigns,  262. 
New  Zealand  game  preserves,  368;  red  deer 

in,  327. 
Niagara  Falls,  swans  swejit  over,  93. 
Nice,  Margaret  M.,  220. 
Nicol,  G.  H.,  48. 
Nighthawk  as  insect-destrover,  21(i;  shot 

for  food,  216,  218. 
Niobrara  Bison  Range,  180. 
Nooe,  Bennet,  222. 
Norboe,  R.  M.,  317. 
Norris,  Governor  Edward  F.,  348. 
North,  Paul,  50. 

N(3rth  American,  Philadelphia,  263. 
North   Carolina,   44,   50,    105,    106;   deer 

killed  in,  172;  hopeless  condition  of,  292; 

private  preserves  in,  360. 
North    Dakota,    44,    50,    106;    new    laws 

needed  in,  293. 
Norton,  Arthur  H.,  43,  48. 
Nova  Scotia,  45,  52;  game  laws  of,  357. 
Nuisances,  wild  animals  may  become,  234. 

Observer,  Utica,  263. 

Ohio,  44,  50,  106;  hopeless  condition,  293. 

Oklahoma,  44,  50,  106;  bison  in,  341;  new 

laws  needed  in,  294;  new  code  of  game 

laws  needed,  294. 
Oldys,  Henry,  on  sale  of  game,  307;  on 

value  of  game,  309. 
Olympus,  Mount,  340. 
Ontario,  45,  52,  157:  game  preserves  of, 

351. 


Opposition,  to  game  protection  in  Penn- 
sylvania, 346;  in  Montana,  348;  to 
legislation,  how  to  meet,  264. 

Oregon,  44,  50,  106,  125,  165;  grizzlies  of, 
178. 

Oriole,  222;  destroy  cotton-boll  weevil, 
216,  217. 

Orlady,  Judge,  decision  of,  147. 

Ornithologist,  case  of  the,  57;  Italian,  kills 
song  birds  for  food,  98. 

Osborn,  Prof.  Henry  Fairfield,  128,  247, 
254,  389. 

Otter,  sea,  193. 

Outdoor  Life  magazine,  48,  74,  166,  263, 
272. 

Outdoor  World  magazine,  206,  263. 

Outing  magazine,  263. 

Owl,  barn,  224;  great  horned,  80,  225; 
long-eared,  224;  screech,  SO. 

Owls,  general  status  of,  224;  horned,  in 
British  Columbia,  356. 

Pacific  bird  refuges,  339. 

Page  wire  fence,  371. 

Palmer,  Theodore  S.,  248;  circular  on  Na- 
tional Reserves,  345 ;  deer  statistics  from, 
172;  game  laws  proposed  by,  46;  Olym- 
pus National  Monument,  340;  on  ante- 
lope, 159;  on  laws,  387. 

Paradise,  birds  of,  being  exterminated 
119,  121,  122,  124,  125;  greater  bird  of", 
113,  115,  119. 

Parakeet,  Carolina,  9,  16;  i)urple  Guade- 
loupe, 16. 

Parasitic  infection  of  ducks,  86. 

Parents,  duty  of,  376. 

Park,  Crater  Lake,  343;  General  Grant, 
341;  Laurentides,  354;  Mt.  Rainier,  343; 
Piatt,  344;  vSequoia,  344;  Sully  Hills, 
344;  Yosemite,  343. 

Parliament,  British,  135. 

Parrot,  Yellow-Winged  Green,  16. 

Patagonia,  guanaco  in,  169. 

Peabody,  James  W.,  text  book  bv,  377. 

Pearson,  t.  Gilbert,  28,  44,  50,  107,  291; 
portrait,  251. 

Pelican  Island  bird  sanctuary,  277. 

Pellett,  F.  C,  48. 

Penalties,  schedule  of,  2. 

Pennock,  C.  J.,  47. 

Pennsylvania,  44,  50,  105,  115,  157,  253; 
aliens  may  not  own  firearms,  103;  de- 
cision on  automatic  guns,  147;  deer 
killed  in,  172;  game  wardens  killed,  103; 
new  laws  needed  by,  295;  state  game 
preserves,  345. 

Penrose,  Dr.  C.  B.,  45,  50. 

Pests,  introduced  species  that  have  be- 
come, 330. 

Petrel,  Black-Capped,  21. 


408 


INDEX 


Phalaropes,  229,  230. 

Pheasants,  being  exterminated,  118,  119, 
124;  blood,  196;  English,  value  of  in 
market,  69;  impeyan,  196;  introduced 
species  of,  325;  not  bud-eaters,  326; 
shipped  from  China  to  England,  200; 
shipped  at  Hankow,  China,  69. 

Philadelphia  Academy  of  Sciences,  391. 

Phillips,  John  JM.,  2.54;  educational  cam- 
paign in  schools  by,  378,  381;  on  goats 
killed  for  food,  70;  Pennsylvania  Game 
Commissioner,  345;  portrait,  255. 

Photographing  live  game,  code  of  ethics 
on,  385. 

Pickhardt,  Carl,  on  caribou  slaughter,  69. 

Pierce,  Ray  V.,  private  game  preserve  of, 
360;  sambar  deer  acclimatized  by,  373. 

Pigeon,  Band-Tailed,  22,  273;  Passenger, 
9,  11,  12;  Victoria  crowned,  113. 

Pinchot,  Gifford,  267,  341.  _ 

Pinnated  Grouse  disappearing,  in  Kansas, 
48;  Nebraska,  49;  Montana,  49;  Min- 
nesota, 49. 

Pioneer,  value  of  game  to  the,  2. 

Pittsboro,  disgrace  of,  by  robin  slau'ter,  222. 

Pittsburgh,  City  ornithologist  of,  381;  il- 
legal sale  of  game  in,  67. 

Plague-spots  for  sale  of  game,  279. 

Plant-lice  in  wheat,  210. 

Platform,  Sportsman's,  384. 

Piatt  National  Park,  344. 

Plover,  black-bellied,  228,  230;  golden,  18, 
31,  228,  230;  upland,  20,  31. 

Plume-hunters,  26,  28. 

Post,  New  York  Evening,  263. 

Posting  farm  lands  advised,  233. 

Potato-bug  bird,  223. 

Pot-hunter  defined,  446. 

Poultry  destroyed  by  hawks  and  owls,  224. 

Predatory  wild  animals,  73. 

Preserve,  every  National  forest  should  be 
a  game,  267. 

Preserve,  Alberta,  352;  Angoniland,  367; 
Athi  Plains,  367;  British  Columbia,  352; 
Budonga  Forest,  367;  Duck  Mountain, 
354;  Elephant  Marsh,  367;  Freycinet's 
Peninsula,  368;  Grand  Canyon,  343; 
Hargeis,  367;  Jubaland,  367;  Kangaroo 
Island,  368;  Little  Barrier  Island,  368; 
Luangwa,  368;  Manitoba,  354;  Mirso, 
367;  Nweru  Marsh,  368;  Ontario,  352; 
Pennsylvania  State,  347;  Riding  Moun- 
tain, 354;  Rustenburg,  368;  Sabi-Pon- 
gola,  368;  Snow  Creek,  348;  Spruce 
Woods,  354;  Superior  National  Game, 
341;  Swaziland,  368;  Teton,  348;  Toro, 
367;  Turtle  Mountain,  354;  Wichita, 
341;  Wilson's  Promontory,  368. 

Preserved  game,  murdering,  273,  274. 

Preserves,  private  game,  358,  360;  private 
and  public  interests  in,  361. 


Press,  duty  of  Italian,  103;  New  York, 
263;  value  of,  in  campaigns,  262. 

Prichard,  W.  H.  H.,  on  guanaco,  169. 

Prospectors,  license  given  to,  176. 

Protection,  accepted  by  antelopes,  313; 
bears,  313;  mule  deer,  313;  song-birds, 
314;  chipmunks,  315;  of  shore-birds,  232. 

"Protected"  game,  sale  of,  forbidden,  67. 

Protective  Association,  Wild  Life,  257. 

Prince  Consort  of  England,  327. 

Prince  Edward  Island,  45,  52;  breeding 
foxes  on,  374. 

Prince,  German  Crown,  359. 

Ptarmigan,  Norway,  eaten  in  Chicago,  69. 

Publicity  in  campaign  work,  262;  value  of, 
393. 

Puma  as  a  game-destroyer,  78,  79. 

Pumas  destroyed  in  British  Columbia,  356. 

Pump  guns,  144;  campaign  against,  won 
in  New  Jersey,  289. 

Quagga,  extinct,  35. 

Quail,  89,  90;  food  habits  of,  219;  portrait 
of,  221;  protection  recognized  by,  316; 
failures  in  restocking  with,  328;  Califor- 
nia Valley,  very  scarce,  47;  Egyptian, 
69;  feeding,  89;  introduced,  329;  killed 
in    1909-10   in   Louisiana,  5;  killed  by 

Quebec,  45,  157,  158,  354. 
Quetico  Forest  Reserve,  352. 

Rabbit  plague,  85,  331. 

Rabbits,  53;  killed  in  Louisiana,  5;  intro- 
duced on  Laysan  Island,  142. 

Rangoon,  pheasant  plumage  seized  in,  198. 

Ranier  National  Park,  343. 

Rainey,  Paul  J.,  177. 

Rats  and  mice  destroyed  by  owls,  224. 

Reasons  against  sale  of  game,  310. 

Recreation  Magazine,  109,  263,  318. 

Refuges,  National  bird,  345. 

Red  deer,  introduced  in  New  Zealand,  327 ; 
of  Europe,  372. 

Reed,  Elizabeth  A.,  219. 

Remington  Arms  Co.,  144,  146. 

Renshaw,  Graham,  35. 

Republican,  Springfield,  263. 

Resident  game-butchers,  69,  70. 

Rhea  being  exterminated,  119. 

Rhinoceros,  great  Indian,  189;  white,  186. 

Rhodesian  fauna,  186. 

Rhode  Island,  45,  50,  59;  new  laws  needed 
in,  295. 

Rhytina,  extinction  of,  36. 

Rice,  Jr.,  James  H.,  45. 

Riding  Mountain  Game  Preserve,  354. 

Rifles  in  hands  of  boys,  376. 

Rinderpest  in  Africa,  83. 

Roberts.  Mrs.  Mary  G.,  of  Tasmania,  38. 


m 


INDEX 


409 


Robin  slaughter,  in  Pittsboro,  N.  C,  222; 
by  Italians,  102;  by  negroes,  105;  in 
eight  ■  southern  states,  105;  in  Texas, 
106;  in  Tennessee,  107;  in  Louisiana, 
108. 

Robins,  food  of,  109;  killed  by  cats,  75, 
76,  81. 

Robinson,  Arthur,  on  automatic  guns,  152. 

Roccolo,  Itahan,  for  catching  birds,  95,  97. 

Rochester  Academy  of  Sciences,  391. 

Rocky  Mountain  Park,  352. 

Rod  and  Gun  in  Canada,  66,  263,  374. 

Rod  and  Gun  Club  of  Sheridan,  Wyoming, 
385. 

Rogers,  Josiah,  340. 

Roosevelt,  Kermit,  186. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  142,  249,  341. 

Rose,  John  ].,  102. 

Rothschild,  Walter,  14,  17,  137. 

Rubber  culture  and  wild  life,  192,  201. 

Ruffed  Grouse,  65,  317. 

Rush,  Frank,  342. 

Sage  Grouse  in  California,  47. 

Sage,  Mrs.  Russell,  gifts  bj',  to  cause  of 
bird  protection,  395. 

Sale  of  game,  plague  spots  for,  279;  pro- 
posed for  California,  361;  suppress, 
the,  306,  312. 

Salt  Lake,  mortality  in  ducks  on,  87. 

Sambar  deer,  372. 

Sanctuaries,  demand  for  forest  reserve,  267. 

Sanctuaries  in  India,  190. 

Sandhill  Crane  nearly  extinct  in  Alberta, 
51. 

Sandpipers,  229,  230;  killed  for  food,  68; 
Bartramian,  20;  pectoral,  18;  red- 
breasted,  18,  31. 

Sandwichmen  employed  in  London,  128. 

Sanford,  L.  C,  20. 

Saskatchewan,  45,  165. 

Sauter,  Frederick,  84. 

Scab  in  Mountain  Sheep,  83. 

"wScatter"  rifle  for  ducks,  60,  153. 

Schlcmmer,  Max,  137. 

Sconce,  Harvey  J.,  47. 

Scott,  Thomas  H.,  340. 

Sea-lion  accepts  protection,  317. 

Seal,  California  Elephant,  40;  West  Indian, 
in  New  York  Aquarium,  39. 

Sea  otter,  52. 

Seaman,  Frank,  phoebe  birds  of,  317. 

Sentiment  in  preservation  of  game,  244. 

Sequoia  Park,  344. 

Seton,  Ernest  T.,  19,  85;  map  of  elk  bv, 
163,  165. 

Sharp-shinned  hawk,  225. 

Shea  plumage  bill,  291. 

Sheep,  big-horn,  71;  next  species  to  be- 
come extinct,  161;  killed  by  pumas,  78; 
in  Colorado,  272;  present  status  of,  161 ; 


in  Lower  California,  162,  169;  in  Gla- 
cier Park,  340;  domestic,  273;  curse  of 
cattle  and  game,  335;  opposition  from 
owners  of,  348. 

Sheep-herders  of  Wyoming,  50. 

Sheep,  black,  lumpy-jaw  in,  83,  84. 

Sheep  owners  exterminating  Thylacine,  38. 

Shields,  G.  O.,  58,  351;  protects  birds  of 
New  York  City,  101. 

Shield's  Magazine,  203. 

Shikar  Club  of  London,  384. 

Shiras,  3rd,  George,  306. 

Shikaree,  new  status  of  native,  188. 

Shooting  game  in  preserves,  358,  359. 

Shore  birds,  becoming  extinct,  in  Montana, 
49 ;  Kansas,  48 ;  Massachusetts,  48 ;  Mich- 
igan, 49;  New  York,  49;  North  Dakota, 
50;  South  Carolina,  50;  Texas,  50;  Wis- 
consin, 51;  general  status  of,  227,  233; 
killed  in  Louisiana,  5;  disappearing,  30. 

Shore,  W.  B.,  on  elk  shipments,  166. 

Shrike,  80. 

Skunk  as  bird  destroyer,  78. 

Slaughter-grounds  for  wild  fowl,  64. 

Slaughter,  of  wild  fowl  in  North  Carolina, 
311;  of  non-game  birds  in  North  Caro- 
lina, 292;  in  Tennessee,  296;  of  deer  in 
Montana,  287;  in  Louisiana,  5;  of  geese 
in  California,  148;  of  band-tailed  pi- 
geons, 22,  273;  of  protected  chamois, 
321;  of  song  birds  in  New  York  City, 
101;  of  starving  elk,  90. 

Sloanaker,  J.  L.,  on  pinnated  grouse,  47. 

Smith,  Charles  L.,  317. 

Smith,  Lee  H.,  390. 

Smyth,  C.  H.,  43,  48. 

Snakes  as  bird  destroyers,  81. 

Snares  for  pheasants,  197. 

Snipe,  Jack,  portrait  of,  230. 

Snow  Creek  antelope  preserve,  2;  game 
preserve,  348. 

Society,  Auciubon,  National,  5ee  Audubon; 
Roj^al,  for  the  Protection  of  Wild  Birds, 
127,  128,  135,  143.  N.  Y.  Zoological, 
see  Zoological  Society. 

South  America,  169. 

South  Carolina,  45, 50, 105, 106;  [deer  killed 
in,  172;  almost  hopeless  condition  of, 
296;  private  preserves  in,  360. 

South  Dakota,  45,  50,  59;  few  laws  needed 
by,  296. 

Sparrow  pest,  334. 

Sparrows  consume  weed-seeds,  223. 

Spoonbill,  Roseate,  20. 

Sportsman,  case  of  a,  57;  character  of  true, 
54,  58,  64;  definition  of  a,  382. 

Sportsman's  Platform,  384. 

Sportsman's  Review,  363. 

Sports  Afield,  263. 

Sprague,  John  F.,  48. 

Spruce  Woods  Game  Preserve,  354. 


410 


INDEX 


I 


Squirrel,  fox,  extinct  in  New  York,  44; 
gray,  in  danger,  32 ;  red,  as  bird  destroyer, 
79. 

Squirrels  killed  in  Louisiana,  5. 

Standard-Union,  Brooklyn,  263. 

Stanford,  Harry  P.,  49;  on  deer  slaughter, 
287. 

Staley,  Walter  C,  50. 

Star,  Washington,  263. 

States,  a  roll-call  of  the,  263. 

State  game  preserves,  345 ;  New  York,  347 ; 
Pennsylvania,  347. 

Stratton,  James  W.,  50. 

Stebbing,  E.  P.,  190,  196. 

Stephan,  S.  A.,  agent  for  Carl  Hagenbeck, 
372. 

Stevens  Arms  Co.,  144,  146. 

Stevenson-Hamilton,  Maj.  J.,  of  the  Trans- 
vaal, 177,  248;  on  status  of  the  settlers, 
365;  on  Sportsman's  Platform,  385. 

Stilt,  230. 

Stokes  fund,  Caroline  Phelps,  395. 

Stone,  Witmer,  45,  50,  391. 

St.  Vincent  Island  game  preserve,  360. 

Sully  Hills  National  Park,  344. 

Sunday  gun,  153. 

Sunken  Lands  of  Arkansas,  271. 

Sun,  New  York,  263. 

Superior  National  Game  Preserve,  341. 

Supreme  Court  decision,  3. 

Swan,  Trumpeter,  19. 

Swans  swept  over  Niagara  Falls,  93. 

Swallows,  as  insect  destroyers,  216,  218. 

Switzerland,  chamois  slaughter  in,  322. 

Tagging  game  for  sale,  370. 

Taming  wild  birds  and  mammals,  314. 

Taylor,  W.  P.,  47. 

Taylor,  W.  J.,  374. 

Teachers,  duty  of,  377. 

Teaching  wild  life  protection  to  the  young, 
376. 

Telegraph  wires,  birds  killed  by,  77. 

Tener,  Governor,  at  Carrick,  Pa.,  380. 

Tennessee,  45,  105,  106,  107,  252;  a  ref- 
ormation needed  in,  296;  Game  Commis- 
sioner of,  252. 

Tern,  Common,  113. 

Terns  and  Gulls  saved  by  Audubon  people, 
320. 

Terns  becoming  extinct  in  Delaware,  47; 
in  North  Carolina,  50. 

Teton  Game  Preserve,  348. 

Texas,  45,  50,  105,  106;  insects  destroyed 
by  birds,  216;  laws  needed  in,  297. 

Text-books,  377 ;  duty  of  writers  of,  378. 

Thayer  John  E.,  24,  395. 

Thome,  Samuel,  395. 

Thylacine  of  Australia  disappearing,  38. 

Tibet,  190. 

Tilcomb,  John  W.,  51,  240,  242. 


Timber  in  National  forests  not  to  be  cut, 

338. 
Times,  New  York,  263. 
Tinkham,  H.  W.,  231. 
Tobacco  pest,  212. 
Tomalin,  Richard  W.,  233. 
Tortoises,  17. 

Toucan,  toco,  being  exterminated,  118. 
Toumay,  James  W.,  392. 
Towne,  S.  G.,  49. 
Townsend,  C.  V.  R.,  371. 
Townsend,     Charles    C,     on     protected 

ducks,  318. 
Townsend,  C.  H.,  elephant  seals  taken  by, 

40. 
Tragopans,  196. 
Trapper  uses  game  for  bait,  in  Wyoming, 

72. 
Trappers  as  game  destroyers,  193. 
Trapping  grizzly  bears  strongly  opposed, 

177. 
Traps  on  Burma-Chinese  border,  198. 
Treaty,  international,  for  protecting  mi- 
gratory birds,  354. 
Triangle  Islands,  seals  on,  39. 
Tribune,  New  York,  263. 
Trogon  being  exterminated,  118. 
Trophies,  purchase  and  sale  of,  383 
Trout  caught  near  Spokane,  205. 
Trouvelot,  Leopold,  introducer  of  gypsy 

moth,  331. 
Truck  crops,  212. 
Tuna  Club,  angling  ethics  of,  144. 
Turkey  vulture  incident  on  Long  Island, 

91;  eaten  by  Italians,  101. 
Turkey,    Wild,    in    South    Carolina,    50; 

Texas,  50;  Missouri,  49. 
Turner,  J.  P.,  52. 
Turtle  Mountain  Game  Preserve,  354. 


Union  and  Advertiser,  263. 

Union  Fire-Arms  Co.,  144,  146. 

United  States  Government,  recent  work 

in  game  protection  by,  249,  266. 
Upp,  Thomas  M.,  81. 
"Useful  Birds  and  Their  Protection,"  75. 
Utah,  45,  51,  59,  106;  new  laws  needed  in, 

298;  national  monuments  of,  344. 

Vancouver  Island,  elk  on,  165. 

Vanishing  species  not  always  recoverable, 
323. 

Van  Kennan,  E.  A.,  290. 

Venezuela,  a  plume-hunter  in,  129;  wild 
birds'  plumage  from,  122. 

"Vermin"  destructive  to  birds,  78. 

Vermont,  45,  51,  59,  157;  deer  killed  in, 
172;  deer  killed  in  Vermont  since  1897, 
240;  few  new  laws  needed  in,  298;  man- 
agement  of  deer  in,  240-242;   protects 


INDEX 


411 


wood-duck,  28;  re-stocking,  with  deer, 

240. 
Viquesncy,  J.  A.,  51. 
Virginia,  45,  51,  10(5,  109;  deer  killed  in, 

172;  many  new  laws  needed  in,  298. 
V^reeland,  Frederick  K.,  353. 

Wagner,  George  E.,  51. 

Wallace,  Dillon,  245;  estimates  3,500  sheep 

in  Colorado,  161. 
Wallace,  John  H.,  Jr.,  46,  253,  268;  on 

Florida  laws,  277. 
Wapiti,    164;   in   Mt.   Olympus   National 

Monument,  340  {see  also,  Elk). 
Ward,  Charles  Willis,  255,  349,  395;  donor 

of  bird  preserve,  319. 
Ward,  Henry  L.,  51,  389;  seals  discovered 

by,  39. 
Warden  service   based  on  merit  system, 

301. 
Wardens,  game,  60;  killed  on  duty,   103; 

number  of  salaried,  237. 
Ward-Mcllhenny  Wild  Fowl  Preserve,  361 . 
Waterton  Lakes  Park,  352,  353. 
Washington,  45,  59,  165;  grizzlies  in,  178; 

a  new  code  of  law^s  needed  in,  298. 
Wayne,  Arthur  T.,  133. 
Weasel,  78,  317. 

Webber,  F.  T.,  on  Colorado    uail,  89. 
Webster,  F.  M.,  214,  381. 
Webster,  Frederic  S.,  381. 
Weed  seeds  eaten  by  quail,  219,  220. 
Weeks,  J.  W.,  bird  bill  of,  267,  306. 
Weevil,  cotton-boll,  215,  216,  221. 
Western  Districts  Game  and  Trout  Pro- 
tective Association,  185. 
Western  Field,  263. 
West  Virginia,  45,  51;  deer  killed  in  172; 

good  conditions  in,  298;  protects  wood- 
duck,  28. 
Wharton,  William  P.,  43,  49,  253;  bison 

census  by,  180. 
Wheat,  losses  on,  209,  210. 
Whipple,  James  S.,  250. 
Whitney,  Caspar,  131. 
Whooping  Crane  extinct,  49;  in  Manitoba, 

52. 
Wichita  National  Bison  Herd,  178,  294. 
Wichita  National  Game  Preserve,  341. 
Wilcox,  Albert,  395;  bequest  from,  256. 
Wild    fowl,    48;    slaughter    grounds,    64; 

refuge,  Louisiana  State,  344. 
Wildebeest  in  Cape  Colony,  185. 
Wild  Life  Call,  388. 
"Wild  Life  in  Australia,"  332. 
Wild  Life  Protectiv^e  Association,  152,  257. 
Wilderness  area  of  North  America,   156; 

game  will  disappear  from,  163. 
Willet,  13,  31. 
Williams,    A.    Bryan,    British    Columbia 

game  warden,  52,  178,  356. 


Wilson,  Mrs.  Minnie  Moore,  16. 

Wilson,  Alexander,  on  the  passenger 
pigeon,  12. 

Wilson,  Erasmus,  on  quail  feeding,  89;  on 
Carrick's  bird  day,  379. 

Wilson,  Governor  Woodrow,  signs  bill 
against  machine  guns,  289. 

Wilson,  James,  Secretary  of  Agriculture, 
343. 

Winchester  Arms  Co.,  144,  146,  150. 

Wind  Cave  Bison  Range,  180,  390. 

Wisconsin,  45,  51,  59,  157;  deer  killed  in, 
172;  new  laws  needed  in,  301. 

Woburn  Park,  David's  deer  at,  36. 

Wolves  destroyed,  79;  in  British  Columbia, 
356. 

Wombat  in  list  of  fur-bearers,  193. 

Women  promote  bird  slaughter,  7. 

Wood,  George  E.,  49. 

Wood,  Lieut.-Col.  William,  355. 

Woodcock,  30,  49,  50,  51,  52. 

Wood-Duck,  28;  eaten  in  seventeen  States, 
29;  disappearing  in  Louisiana,  48;  nest- 
ing in  Zoological  Park,  207. 

Woodpecker,  Downy,  214,  226;  golden- 
winged,  226;  hairy,  226. 

Woodpeckers,  food  of,  226. 

Wooley-Dod,  Arthur  G.,  51. 

Wool-Growers'  Association,  2;  opposes 
game  preserves,  335,  348. 

World,  New  York,  263. 

Worthington,  C.  C,  236. 

Wrens  destroy  boll  weevil,  218. 

Wyoming,  45,  51,  59;  efforts  by,  to  feed 
starving  elk,  166;  elk  case,  71 ;  deer,  158; 
grizzlies,  178;  laws  needed,  302;  succor 
of  elk  in,  337;  National  Monuments  in, 
344;  State  Game  Preserve  in,  348. 


Yale  University,  392. 

Yalakom  Game  Preserve,  British  Colum- 
bia, 354. 

Yellowstone  Park,  animals  in,  336;  bison 
herd  of,  180;  elk  in,  165;  protected  an- 
imals of,  313. 

Yoho  Park,  352. 

Yosemite  National  Park,  343. 

Yukon  Territory,  sale  of  game  in,  357. 

Zebra,  Burchell's,  extinct,  37;  in  Cape 
Colony,  185. 

Zoological  Park,  New  York,  19;  ducks 
killed  in,  92;  thylacine  in,  38;  wood- 
duck,  quail  and  rabbits  in,  315,  316; 
woodpeckers  decreasing  in,  226. 

Zoological  Society,  New  York,  389,  395; 
gift  of  bison  herd  from,  178,  294,  341 ; 
on  "extermination,"  32;  protects  birds 
of  New  York  City,  101. 

Zoologists,  duty  of  American,  386. 


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